Abstract
THE object of this book is to bring before the general public the newer conceptions of the aims and methods of public health. The older public health mainly dealt with the environment; the newer is chiefly concerned with the individual. The old teaching stated that infectious diseases were generated in the foul, ill-smelling, unventilated, sunless hovels of the slums; that a pinhole leak in some plumbing fixture accounted for diphtheria or typhoid fever; that dampness caused malaria, and impure water yellow fever. The new teaching begins and usually ends with the search for (a) the infected individual, (b) the routes of spread of infection from that individual, (c) the routes of disposal of the excreta of the community, by which, if infection occur, the infecting agent might reach the members of the community. To locate all the infective individuals of the community and to guard all their discharges is the ultimate goal of modern preventive measures.
The New Public Health.
By Prof. H. W. Hill. Pp. x + 206. (New York: The Macmillan Co.; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1916.) Price 5s. 6d. net.
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H., R. The New Public Health . Nature 97, 460 (1916). https://doi.org/10.1038/097460a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/097460a0