Journal Articles
Hamlin, C. (1995). Could you starve to death in England in 1839? the Chadwick-Farr controversy and the loss of the ‘social’ in public health. The American Journal Of Public Health, (6), 856.
A historical controversy between William Farr and Edwin Chadwick centered around starvation as a cause of death. The industrial England of the 1830’s with its struggling poor and malnourished workers is the backdrop to this philosophical debate about disease and social problems. Chadwick who was more interested in technical and administrative issues argued that disease caused death. Farr, on the other hand, had a complex view of social and economic conditions leading to disease and subsequent death. Child labor, poor diet, and hunger determined public health problems.
Whitehead, M. (2000). William Farr’s legacy to the study of inequalities in health. Bulletin Of The World Health Organization, (1)
What could be more fitting for this issue’s special section of the Bulletin devoted to inequalities in health than to select the work of William Farr to be the focus
VITAL STATISTICS: MEMORIAL VOLUME OF SELECTIONS FROM THE REPORTS AND WRITINGS. (2000). Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 78(1), 88.
Presents an excerpt of the `Vital statistics: Memorial volume of selections from the reports and writings of William Farr.’ Life and death in England; Probable decrease of mortality; Possibilities and difficulties of extending human life; Relative mortality of males and females at seven age periods
Bingham, P., Verlander, N. Q., & Cheal, M. J. (2004). John Snow, William Farr and the 1849 outbreak of cholera that affected London: a reworking of the data highlights the importance of the water supply. Public Health (Elsevier), 118(6), 387-394. doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2004.05.007
This paper examines why Snow’s contention that cholera was principally spread by water was not accepted in the 1850s by the medical elite. The consequence of rejection was that hundreds in the UK continued to die. Methods. Logistic regression was used to re-analyse data, first published in 1852 by William Farr, consisting of the 1849 mortality rate from cholera and eight potential explanatory variables for the 38 registration districts of London.