Medicine Atlas

How Healing Is Practiced
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme

Switch Atlas

Medicine Atlas

Three Public Health Careers, Each Defined by One Specific Act

09/21/2026 12:00:00 AM

Back to Interesting Facts

Public health's nineteenth century founding moment is usually summarized in the abstract: sanitary reform responding to industrial urban epidemics. Three individual careers in this atlas make it concrete. Edwin Chadwick's 1842 report on the sanitary condition of the labouring population, and the Public Health Act of 1848 that followed it in Britain, are the field's commonly cited founding milestones. William Crawford Gorgas led sanitary and mosquito-control public health campaigns for the Panama Canal. Sara Josephine Baker was a pioneering public health physician who reduced infant mortality in New York City. Lillian Wald founded public health nursing at the Henry Street Settlement. Each is a specific, attested application of the same founding idea: that protecting a population's health is a matter of organized public action, not treatment delivered one patient at a time.

Where To Read More

  • Public HealthPublic Health and Preventive SpecialtiesThe subject specialty.
  • William Crawford GorgasSurgeons and Perioperative SpecialistsWilliam Crawford Gorgas, one of the three careers this essay reads together
  • Sara Josephine BakerPublic Health and Epidemiology SpecialistsSara Josephine Baker, one of the three careers this essay reads together
  • Lillian WaldNursing and Midwifery ProfessionalsLillian Wald, one of the three careers this essay reads together