Downloaded from The Perfect Food and the Filth Disease: Milk-borne Typhoid and Epidemiological Practice in Late Victorian Britain http://jhmas.oxfordjournals.org JACOB STEERE-WILLIAMS Program in the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, University of Minnesota, MMC #506 Mayo Building, 420 Delaware Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455. Email:
[email protected] ABSTRACT. This article explores the initial set of epidemiological investiga- tions in Victorian Britain that linked typhoid fever to milk from dairy at University of Minnesota,Walter Library Serial Processing on March 16, 2010 cattle. Because Victorian epidemiologists first recognized the milk-borne route in outbreaks of typhoid fever, these investigations served as a model for later studies of milk-borne scarlet fever, diphtheria, and perhaps tuber- culosis. By focusing on epidemiological practices conducted by Medical Inspectors at the Medical Department of the Local Government Board and Medical Officers of Health, I show that Victorian epidemiology was committed to field-based, observational methods that defined the profes- sional nature of the discipline and its theories and practices. Epidemiological investigations of milk-borne typhoid heated up several important public health debates in the second half of the nineteenth century, and demonstrate how Victorian epidemiology was not solely wedded to examining population studies using statistical methods, as his- torians have typically argued, but also relied on observational case-tracing in individuals, animals, and even environments. KEYWORDS: Britain, Victorian, epidemiology, public health, milk, typhoid fever. N 1872, Alfred Haviland stated that “typhoid fever is now a national disgrace; we ought not to rest until we reduce it to one Isimply local or personal; its existence will then become JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE AND ALLIED SCIENCES # The Author 2010.