ABSTRACT
Improvements in the sanitation, housing, nutrition, and other social conditions of the British population over the past century have resulted in a dramatic decline in such epidemic diseases as cholera, typhoid, typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis and diphtheria. Medical advances in antibiotic therapy and vaccine production after the Second World War brought communicable disease under control still further. Consequently, a body of opinion gained ground which saw communicable disease as a rapidly diminishing area of concern.
