PUBLIC HEALTH

Public Health



Public Health

Public Health

The knowledge of public health in history is seen as something that shows intelligence in ancient empires. There would have been many things that helped the Romans to develop their understanding of the importance of good hygiene, but was the government really the most important influence on public health throughout the empires of the Ancient Egyptians to the Middle Ages? The Ancient Egyptians It's known that the Egyptians had knowledge of hygiene, but they had it for very different reasons to the Romans, for example. The Egyptians practiced cleanliness for mostly religious and social reasons, not for the good of the population. They still had baths and toilets for basic personal hygiene, but they had not connected some things with hygiene. For instance, they used mosquito nets but these were just to prevent the bites, not to prevent malaria. Priests were very clean for only religious reasons, and the Egyptian population only washed because it 'appealed to the gods'. They hadn't developed the technology for sewers or public medical care, although they had doctors who mixed herbal remedies, but a lot of these were ineffective because they were designed to ward off spirits. To protect a son from disease, in 'Papyrus Berlin' (c.1800bc) it says, 'I have made a charm for my child which will protect him against you, oh evil spirits! This charm is made from evil-smelling herbs and from garlic which is harmful to you, from honey which is sweet to people and horrible to spirits, from a fish tail and a rag and a backbone of a perch. 'This is an example of how the Egyptians focused on evil spirits causing disease, and though the early Greeks believed this too, they found remedies which they believed to ward off spirits, but also work as basic bacteria-killing concoctions. The Egyptians' medicine would not have worked very well compared to this.

However, this doesn't mean the Egyptians were completely wrong about cures. They understood that honey is a preservative, which they used in their process of mummification, and it is thought that they wore eye make-up that protected their eyes from disease.

In this particular ancient civilisation, government had barely influenced public health at all, with all their reasons coming from religious beliefs.

History of Public Health

Public health practice can be traced back to the Black Death of the fourteenth century when systems of quarantine were established by towns and cities (Mooney, 2005). In the 1700s, public health organizations were often organized by the police department; health agencies only became involved for the threat of outbreaks (Scutchfied & Keck, 2003). It was not until the late 1800s when an increasing amount of effort was put into enhancing public health. Conventions were held between 1857 and 1860 on systems of quarantine and sanitation in major U.S. cities along the east coast (Scutchfied & Keck, 2003). In 1864, Red Cross was established in the United States (Stanhope & Lancaster 2008); a survey was conducted that same year by a ...