History of Public Health Flashcards
What are the requirements for survival?
Air, water, food, shelter, care
Describe the requirements for survival.
Air: poor quality can cause sickness of death (often in minutes).
Water: poor quality or lack of water can cause sickness or death in days.
Food: can sustain or injure: poor quality or lack of food can cause sickness or death in days or weeks.
Shelter: must have, at least on a seasonal basis.
Care and mutual support: especially around birthing and protecting the new generation.
What are public health codes based on?
The society’s belief system and the society’s understanding of health/disease
How did written law/codes come about?
Oral tradition
What are examples of public health codes?
Tribal tules
Hieroglyphs
Chinese Empire
Bible
Koran
Roman Senate
What was the Roman Senate public health code?
Salus populi: suprema lex esta = “Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law”
What are examples of the requirements and prohibitions (tribal rules) that are passed on through oral traditions?
Don’t camp in damp, swampy places.
Don’t use still or unclear water.
Don’t allow animal waste inside shelters.
Avoid certain foods, plants, or animals.
Assist with feeding of infants.
What are examples of how oral traditions eventually became part of written codes?
The Bible, the book of Leviticus spells out the rabbi’s power to evict lepers and demolish their housing (based on fear of the disease and the misperception that it was communicable).
Both the Koran and the Bible have detailed food codes.
What is the general time line for the history of public health?
Ancient Greece.
Roman Empire.
Middle Ages.
Birth of Modern Medicine.
Great Sanitary Awakening.
Modern Public Health.
Talk about the Ancient Greeks and their public health.
Personal hygiene: important to bathe, wash hands.
Physical fitness: olympics.
Naturalistic concept: disease caused by imbalance between man and his environment (ex. air, water, places) (ill health was caused by an imbalance between man and environment).
What did the Greeks understand?
The importance of washing hands, taking a bath, exercising and eating good food
Talk about Hippocrates and his public health.
Father of Western medicine.
Casual relationships: disease results from imbalance of person and environment: climate, soil, water, lifestyle, and nutrition. Illness had a physical and rational explanation.
Coined health-related terms, including acute, chronic, epidemic (Epis Demos)
Talk about the Roman Empire and their public health.
Adopted Greek health values.
Great engineers: sewage systems; aqueducts.
Administration: public baths, water supply, markets.
What engineering did the Romans do to contribute to public health?
Built aqueducts to bring water into the city.
Plumbing technology was very advanced.
Replaced leaky clay pipes with lead pipes (led to lead poisoning)
Why did the Romans collect taxes?
To support public services such as:
- public baths
- water and sewage systems
- restaurant inspection
