Anne Hardy has drawn on a wide range of public health records for a detailed epidemiological investigation of the many infectious diseases--whooping cough, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, smallpox, typhus, typhoid, and tuberculosis--in Victorian society. Hardy explores factors which helped to reduce fatality, focusing particularly on preventive medicine, and on the local and domestic circumstances affecting the diseases' behavior. This is a significant contribution to the historical debate that arose from Thomas McKeown's theory of modern population growth.

Salmonella infections were the most significant food poisoning organisms affecting human and animal health across the globe for most of the twentieth century. In this pioneering study, Anne Hardy uncovers the discovery of food poisoning as a public health problem and of Salmonella as its cause. She demonstrates how pathways of infection through eggs, flies, meat, milk, shellfish, and prepared foods were realised, and the roles of healthy human and animal carriers understood. This volume takes us into the world of the laboratories where Salmonella and their habits were studied - a world with...