Abstract
Public health cannot be understood without a knowledge of its history. ‘The origins of public health into the 1700s’ considers the earliest roots of public health, 4,000 years ago in northern India. Going back centuries highlights clear continuities between public health responses in the deeper past and in more recent times. These centuries show the development of public health responses as part of the armoury of the modernizing state, in association with military and economic needs; punitive responses to epidemic disease including the practice of quarantine; the association between health and morality; and the beginnings of scientific enquiry into public health issues, specifically through the development of statistics.
