The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health.

John Duffy's excellent book is a narrative history that describes public health problems and details public attempts to cope with them from the early 17th century to the very recent past. This book is a rich account of public administration and public policy over almost 400 years in the United States. The colonial period through the early 19th century posed particular problems of health related to an urban society dependent on animal transportation, limited sanitation, and an imperfect understanding of the causes and methods of the transmission of disease. From the mid-19th century to the 1920s, effective methods of intervention and prevention of a number of diseases were developed and haltingly implemented. Since the early 20th century, while many problems have been addressed, new threats to the public's health have emerged. In each era, …