Why read The Contagious City?

Book cover of The Contagious City: The Politics of Public Health in Early Philadelphia

Book description

By the time William Penn was planning the colony that would come to be called Pennsylvania, with Philadelphia at its heart, Europeans on both sides of the ocean had long experience with the hazards of city life, disease the most terrifying among them. Drawing from those experiences, colonists hoped to…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Contagious City as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Andrew M. Wehrman

Author

Simon Finger’s book, The Contagious City, is a wonderful, concise introduction to the politics of public health in early America. By focusing on Philadelphia, a city literally designed by William Penn to be healthier than European cities, Finger shows how a distinctly American view of public health developed even after that original plan failed to achieve its desired results. Finger describes the growth of the medical community in Philadelphia, its trials during the Revolution, and its failures during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic.

From Andrew's list on understanding health and politics in the early US.