The Contagious City: The Politics of Public Health in Early Philadelphia by Simon Finger

Abstract

Simon Finger's The Contagious City: The Politics of Public Health in Early Philadelphia traces the connections between politics and public health in Philadelphia from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. The author does a fine job showing how political ideology corresponded with health and medical reform. Finger writes, "I . . . show how political efforts to promote health on a collective basis . . . shaped the political culture of that city and of the province and the nation around it" (5). He continues, "Ideas about people, politics, and space influenced the way colonists, rebels, and republicans conceived their polity" (6). As Philadelphia underwent colonial development, experienced revolutionary transformation, and exerted national influence, political leaders, medical professionals, city planners, and public health reformers did their best to positively influence the health of the city's residents as well as the urban body politic.