Public health
National developments in the 18th and 19th centuries
Nineteenth-century movements to improve sanitation occurred simultaneously in several European countries and were built upon foundations laid in the period between 1750 and 1830. From about 1750 the population of Europe increased rapidly, and with this increase came a heightened awareness of the large numbers of infant deaths and of the unsavoury conditions in prisons and in mental institutions.
This period also witnessed the beginning and the rapid growth of hospitals. Hospitals founded in the United Kingdom, as the result of voluntary efforts by private citizens, helped to create a pattern that was to become familiar in public health services. First, a social evil is recognized and studies are undertaken through individual initiative. These efforts mold public opinion and attract governmental attention. Finally, such agitation leads to governmental action.
Scrooge, Oliver Twist, jilted Miss Havisham, David Copperfield, Gradgrind, Lady Deadlock, all of these characters are known even to those who have never opened a novel by world-famous and never-out-of-print Charles Dickens. He lives on. He s 209 today and his books and his life still fascinate.
Married at 24, by 40, Dickens had 10 children, seven sons and three daughters. He had an affair, left his wife, wanted scarlet geraniums on his coffin, asked that his horse be shot the day that he himself died and wanted to be buried in a local churchyard in Kent, in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner .