Includes bibliographical references and index.

In search of Hygeia : systems, modernity and public health -- A perfect chaos : centralization and the struggle for national system -- Numbers, norms and opinions : death and the measurement of progress -- Officialism : the art and practice of sanitary inspection -- Matter in its right place : technology and the building of waste disposal systems -- Stamping out : logistics, risk and infectious disease -- Personal hygiene : cleanliness, class and the habitual self -- Conclusion : systems, variations, politics.

"When and how did public health become modern? In Governing Systems, Tom Crook re-examines this key question in the context of Victorian and Edwardian England, long regarded as one of the 'homes' of modern public health. The modernity of modern public health, Crook argues, should be located not in the rise of a centralized, bureaucratic and disciplinary State, but in the contested formation and intricate functioning of systems of governing, from the administrative to the technological. Equally, we need to embrace a dialectical understanding of modern governance, one that is rooted in the interaction of multiple levels, agents and times. Theoretically ambitious, but empirically grounded, Governing Systems will be of interest to historians of modern public health and modern Britain, as well as anyone interested in the complex gestation of the governmental dimensions of modernity"--Provided by publisher.

Description based on print version record.