La santé publique en milieu urbain (XIXe-XXe siècles) : hygiène et mesures d'assainissement

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a discussion of the various ways in which improvements in standards of hygiene and sanitation affected public health, and thus the level of mortality, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is particularly concerned with the urban environment in Europe and America. The principal argument is as follows : it seems likely that medical intervention did help to promote the cause of public hygiene -especially in the late nineteenth century- that public hygiene represented an important part of public health at that time and that public health improvements clearly did assist the decline of mortality, but that the precise magnitude of these relationships cannot be discerned.