Medicine - Public health and welfare

Question 1

What are examples of lack of Public health and hygiene in the medieval times?

Answer 1

• crowded housing
• Waste was thrown into the streets, so water supplies became contaminated
• Government played little role

Question 2

What changed in the early modern period?

Answer 2

• Tudor laws forbade slaughterhouses
• A 1532 law (passed by Henry VIII) allowed towns and cities to change a tax to pay for sewers, but few did.
• Houses were built further apart after the Great Fire of London 1666

Question 3

What did Edwin Chadwick do?

Answer 3

• Campaigner who published his ‘Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population’ in 1842.
• set up the Health of Towns Association
• his work led to the first Public Health Act

Question 4

When was the first public health act and what did it do?

Answer 4

1848 let local councils improve conditions

Question 5

What was the great stink (1858)?

Answer 5

terrible smell caused by human waste in the Thames baking in the hot summer.

Question 6

What did the public health act of 1875 do?

Answer 6

Local councils had to provide clean water, maintain sewers, monitor hygiene in slaughterhouses, and collect rubbish

Question 7

When was the smallpox vaccination made compulsory?

Answer 7

1852

Question 8

What was the housing act of 1919?

Answer 8

promised 500,000 ‘Homes for Heroes’ for soldiers returning from WW1. Less than half built

Question 9

What happened to housing in the modern period?

Answer 9

council houses built

slums cleared

Question 10

Why were the Clean Air Acts 1956 and 1968 made?

Answer 10

‘Killer Smog’ in London killed 12,000

Question 11

What were the Government attempts to improve public health and welfare?

Answer 11

• 1906-14 Liberal government passed social reforms including national insurance and old age pensions, to help reduce poverty.
• NHS - free care from 1948, including vaccinations, so public health improved.