ABSTRACT
It is not always the case that in order to solve a particular problem a precise understanding of its cause or causes is needed. A number of scholars have pointed out that the European health reformers of the nineteenth century had very little knowledge about the medical aetiology of the major health problems that afflicted the urban poor. Dubos (1971) argues that these reformist campaigns, which agitated for cleaner food, water and air, were motivated mostly by humanitarian rather than scientific impulses. It would be some years before the microbial origins of these diseases were discovered and there are those who seriously question whether these later scientific discoveries contributed significantly to improvements in public health (McKeown 1979).
