Professionalization in public health reflects wider institutional and political forces. Depending on the historical context in different countries, public health has developed as a medical specialty or as an independent field, entirely within the state or in mixed public-private institutions, closely or weakly tied to social movements, and in varying relations to fields such as engineering, nur...

maternal mortality, were initially promoted as additions to existing practices rather than major innovations. The volume also provides a wonderful resource for anyone teaching the history of germ theories of disease. The documents from the period 1850-1904 (chapters 10-16) first show pre-germ ideas and then how bacteriological understanding was adapted into existing frameworks often with little...