The historic Health Act 2006 was judged by many to be the most significant piece of public health legislation since the Clean Air Act of 1956, fulfilling more than two decades of lobbying and campaigning from the environmental health profession. The act prohibited smoking in all enclosed UK workplaces, including pubs, bars and restaurants. Wales…
An infamous cold snap in London in December 1952 produced a toxic ‘peasouper’ fog that lingered for days and caused a huge number of premature deaths. At first, there was little response. Prime Minister Harold MacMillan fobbed off the House of Commons with talk of the complexity and expense of cleaning up air quality. But…
Extensive slum clearance in the UK was ushered in by the Conservatives’ 1954 Housing, Repairs and Rents Act. It was much-need. The urban landscape of the early 1950s would appear alien to a person magically transported from the present. Much by-law housing from the 19th century survived, particularly in the north, in rows of monotonous…
In August-September 1899, he was sent to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone where he organized a sanitation drive, clearing the streets of tyres, bottles and empty cans and leveling roads so that rain water would not gather into puddles. But the Freetown malaria control programme did not yield desired results, probably because Ross had…
On 20 August 1897, in Secunderabad, Ronald Ross made his landmark discovery. While dissecting the stomach tissue of an anopheline mosquito fed four days previously on a malarious patient, he found the malaria parasite and went on to prove the role of Anopheles mosquitoes in the transmission of malaria parasites in humans. For this discovery Sir Ronald…
One of the early advocates of bacteriology was Percy Frankland (1858– 1946), who worked with his father at the School of Mines, where he was an assistant in the water laboratory. After learning of the plate culturing method at an exhibition in London, he visited Koch’s laboratory to master this new method. Frankland used the…
The Alkali Act was passed in Great Britain to regulate pollution connected with the production of superphosphates. The Alkali Act regime was overhauled and expanded in the Alkali & c. Works Regulation Act 1881, which, significantly, placed responsibility for the system into the hands of the local Government Board. This made the context in which this facet…
Not until the Act of 1875 was inspection and analysis of imported foodstuffs compulsory; this Act won the support of the trade industries because of its emphasis on “outside” contamination as well as its important distinction between “adulterated foods,” that is, food presenting itself as “pure” although it indeed had additives, and “manufactured” foods, such…
Knowledge that microbes lead fascinating chemical lives is as old as microbiology itself. Observations in the late 19th century by John Scott Burdon-Sanderson that were elaborated on by Pasteur and Joubert gave rise to the idea that compounds secreted by some microbes could have remarkable effects on the lives of others. In 1871, he reported that Penicillium…
Edward Frankland set up filtration experiments in the laboratory, using glass cylinders six feet high and about ten inches in diameter, open at the top and bottom and placed over; earthenware troughs. A glass tube was inserted in the middle for aeration purposes. Five different filter media were used: coarse gravel, sand, soil, loamy marl…
Finally, it was recognized that the 1848 Act had failed to produce the desired results: this was due mainly to that Act being permissive rather than compulsory. The 1866 Act compelled local authorities to improve local conditions and remove nuisances (health hazards). They became responsible also for the provision of sewers, water and street cleaning.…
Beginning in 1865, Lister used carbolic acid to wash his hands, his instruments, and the bandages used in the operation. Lister also sprayed the air with carbolic acid to kill airborne germs. After more than a year of using and refining these techniques, Lister had sufficient data to show that his methods were a success.…
In 1864 Edmund Alexander Parkes published the first edition of the Manual of Practical Hygiene; it reached during his lifetime a fourth edition, an eighth edition in 1891, and was translated into many languages. It used a traditional airs, waters and places structure, going back to Hippocrates, and this persisted for a generation. In 1896 it…
The first English milk law was passed prohibiting watering of milk.
When the incompetence of the medical services in the Crimea became common knowledge, Parkes was appointed to organize and take charge of a temporary hospital at Renkioi in Asia Minor to relieve pressure on the hospitals in Scutari. As a result of the glaring faults of organization in the Army Medical Department, which were revealed…
In 1849 Snow published what should have been another groundbreaking paper, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, demonstrating that more people died from cholera in the area served by certain South London water companies. These drew their water straight from the River Thames, which, at this time, had around sixty sewage outlets gushing into…
As a disinfectant, chlorine was first used about the year 1800 by de Morveau, in France, and by Cruikshank, in England, who prepared the gas by heating a mixture of hydrochloric acid and potassium bichromate or pyrolusite; this is essentially the same as the original mixture used by Scheele. During the early part of the last century the…
The 1848 Public Health Act was the first step on the road to improved public health. One of the individuals who played an important role in its creation was Edwin Chadwick, a social reformer. He considered that the most important steps to improve the health of the public were: • improved drainage and provision of sewers • the…
In 1825, the ponds of the Chelsea Waterwork Company were used as the basis of the Grosvenor Canal which was opened to traffic that year. By this time there were complaints about the quality of the water that the company was drawing from the River Thames, and in 1829, under engineer James Simpson the Chelsea…
Report of a Committee of the Parliament of Great Britain stated that evidence bore out the practicability of smoke prevention