Public Health Problems

Abstract

THE author of this volume—which forms one of the Contemporary Science Series—has sought “to bring to a focus some of the essential points in evolution, environment, parasitism, prophylaxis, and sanitation, bearing upon the preservation of public health.” It was impossible for him to deal fully in the space at his disposal with any particular part of so vast a subject, but he has contrived to give a very clear and interesting idea of the main lines of inquiry with which workers in the public health service are chiefly concerned. First he treats of internal and external influences affecting health, these influences being heredity, physical influences (light and heat), chemical media, and biological agents. Then he discusses the following aspects of communicable diseases—causation, parasitism, dissemination, and modifications. Afterwards there are series of chapters on defensive measures against communicable diseases, and on the urban dwelling Mr. Sykes, as medical officer of health for St. Pancras and honorary secretary of the Incorporated Society of Medical Officers of Health, has had ample opportunity for the study of the questions on which he discourses, and his book ought to be of good service in disseminating sound ideas as to the conditions on compliance with which the attainment of a higher standard of public health depends.

Public Health Problems.

By John F. J. Sykes. Illustrated. (London: Walter Scott)