Public Health in Glasgow, 1905–1946

Public Health in Glasgow, 1905-1946, by ALEXANDER MACGREGOR, Edinburgh and London, E. & S. Livingstone, 1967, pp. xi, 175, illus., 25s. Od. The lifetime of professional work which Sir Alexander Macgregor spent in Glasgow saw the transformation of the city from a major centre of disease and death to a place nearly 'as healthy as the country', in the prophetic words of Dr. James Russell, an earlier Medical Officer of Health of the city. Sir Alexander's account of the growth of public health services during the first half of the century within a local government framework epitomises British public health history in general; and it illustrates well the special attributes of local government to bring about development and change with the support and encouragement of the people and also its capacity for enlightened experimentation in the fields of environmental and personal hygiene. The account is enlivened by personal anecdote. It deals in detail with the epidemic and endemic infections-smallpox, plague, typhus, typhoid, erisypelas, cerebrospinal fever-particularly before the First World War; with housing and other environmental problems; with the development of personal health services and their co-ordination under local government after the Local Government Act of 1929; and it ends with the period of the Second World War. It is a valuable addition to local public health history.