ABSTRACT
THIS Part will be considered by some to be foreign to a volume of chiefly personal recollections. I am willing that it shall be so considered, and the reader may pass on to Part III if he holds this view. But I regard Part II as essential to the task I undertook in writing my recollections; for it gives the background of any work I have been able to do, and it elucidates the influences activatit;tg my own share in public health reform and that of my contemporaries. I hold strongly that a subjectin this instance Fifty Years in Public Health-is best understood when we know how public health during those years came to be what it became, and that this genesis can only be fully understood when one extends one's examination beyond the events of an individual life. This task is easier in regard to those whose work was finished in my youth than for those whose work has been contemporaneous with my own; and I remind my readers that the later chapters of this volume give chiefly personal recollections and do not profess to set out, except by way of occasional notes and references, the work done by many others also engaged in public health work.
