At the end of the nineteenth century, public health was the province of part-time political appointees and volunteer groups of every variety. Public health officers were usually physicians, but they could also be sanitary engineers, lawyers, or chemists--there was little agreement about the skills and knowledge necessary for practice. In Disease and Discovery, Elizabeth Fee examines the conflicting ideas about public health's proper subject and scope and its search for a coherent professional unity and identity. She draws on the debates and decisions surrounding the establishment of...