ABSTRACT
The history of public health in the UK is largely the history of changing ideas about how disease is caused and what can be done to reduce it and improve health. Public health took on an unmistakably social and political agenda, which seemed to be weakened and even lost as the nineteenth century wore on. The work of public health doctors was therefore concerned with investigating the origins and causes of disease and taking actions to prevent them. The tasks of district health authorities (DHAs) and public health were seen to be almost identical, with the public health doctor being the means through which the DHA’s public health tasks were to be performed. The principal recommendations of this Committee of Inquiry were accepted by government and the renaissance of public health medicine seemed to be beginning. The Committee of Inquiry report was therefore seen as providing a rationale, a professional renewal and a framework for a re-birth of the specialty.
