Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on An Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain; with Appendices.

The basis of public health as we know it. First edition of 'one of the most important documents of the first half of the nineteenth century', the groundbreaking report that established both the statistical science of public health and the role of government in addressing it (PMM 313).

'In 1838 a serious outbreak of disease in Whitechapel prompted Chadwick, as Secretary of the Poor Law Commissioners, to appoint Dr. Southwood Smith and two other medical men to report on it. What they found so shocked the country that similar reports were called for from other industrial centres. The sequel was the issue of the [present] staggering document... Its recommendations included for the first time national responsibility for drainage, cleaning of streets, paving, light and water supply, and a national health and burial service. The Health Board of 1848, the Local Government Board of 1871 and today's Ministry of Health (1919) [now the Department of Health and Social Care]' (PMM). Historian G.M. Young pointed out that Chadwick's influence was responsible for 'the introduction into the British constitution of "the Benthamite formula — inquiry, legislation, execution, inspection and report"' (PMM).

First edition; 3 lithographic folding maps and charts, 16 lithographic plates of which 5 are double page, engravings within the text, contemporary ownership inscription to title, later ownership signature to front pastedown, punch to title and following leaf, pencilled notes to rear endpapers, contents spotted, particularlyt he plates, and with some toning and offsetting; original purple cloth, titles to spine gilt, some loss from the ends of the spine, which is a little faded, some bumps to the edges and corners, cloth a little rubbed and darkened, a very good copy; 457pp.

PMM 313; Garrison-Morton 1608; Norman, 100 Books Famous in Medicine 63; Norman Library of Science and Medicine 434.