Understanding medical officers of health

Abstract

Sir John was speaking of sanitary reform. That began with Edwin Chadwick who had been Jeremy Bentham's secretary, and was associated with a politically active group, the Philosophical Radicals who espoused Bentham's ideas. The background to Chadwick's thinking was complex. On the nature of administration it was twofold: he admired the kind of orderly, centralised administration which had emerged from the France of Napoleon and he had assisted Bentham with drafting his Constitutional Code. 2 This was a very detailed blueprint for a utilitarian state. It contained very definite ideas on the nature of public office, and ideas for the division of governmental responsibilities into Ministries such as those for Indigence Relief, Education, Health etc? Chadwick's ideas on the causation of disease seem to have derived from those of his medical friend, Thomas Southwood Smith. Southwood Smith thought: