Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830-1930

A broad, panoramic study of the divergence in public health policies across Europe, 1830-1930.

"I find this a quite dazzling work, imaginative in conception, broad in vision, amazingly erudite in execution, and perceptive in its judgements. There is simply no work like it--a Europe-wide juxtaposition of medicine and politics. Readers will surely relish the astonishing 'War and Peace'-like panorama of disease which Baldwin paints and the consummate mastery with which he handles his magazine of materials." Roy Porter, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, University of London"...Baldwin is a stylist as well as a deeply curious researcher. Some passages are beautifully written, terms have been artfully chosen, there is humour, amusing and effective anecdotes abound." Times Literary Supplement"Peter Baldwin has written an expansive book bridging political history and the history of disease regulation." Andrew R. Aisenberg, American Historical Review"The boldness of the undertaking is more than matched here by the astonishing depth and breadth of the research. This encyclopedic bibliographic range makes the book a real treasure for researchers, and even if for no other reason than this, historians of public health will be in Baldwin's debt for many years to come." JAMA"...this book is well sorth the effort it takes to read. Though not abandoning the notion that prevention poliicies are partially shaped by political and economic interests, it gives a far more nuanced picture of the complex relationships between policies and interests than we have had before, and on a scale unmatched by previous work. It is an important and valuable contribution." Journal of Interdisciplinary History

This is a highly original study of public health policies adopted in Britain, France, Germany and Sweden - with particular regard to cholera, smallpox and syphilis. Its use of medical history illuminates important questions of the development of statutory intervention and the evolution of the modern state in Europe.

Peter Baldwin is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases of the European Welfare State (1990). His latest book is Disease and Democracy: The Industrialized World Faces AIDS (2005).

1. Preventive variations; 2. Enter cholera; 3. Cholera comes of age; 4. Smallpox faces the lancet; 5. Syphilis between prostitution and promiscuity; 6. The politics of prevention; Bibliography.