The Aim of Public Health

Medicine Through Time – Public Health and the Great Plague of 1665, c. 1450-1700

In this course, Dr Jane Stevens-Crawshaw (Oxford Brookes University) explores the relationship between plague and public health during the renaissance in England. We start by looking at how public health functioned and developed in the renaissance. We then move on to have a closer look at the changing nature of plague in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After this we look at how hospitals changed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The penultimate module will see us look more closely at the idea of quarantine and how this influenced how society dealt with plague. Finally, we examine the Great Plague of 1665 which wiped out nearly a quarter of London’s population.

The Aim of Public Health

In this module, we look at how public health functioned and developed in the renaissance in England. We examine two questions: (i) What was the aim of public health in this period?; and (ii) why was it a priority of governments?