This book attempts to set communicable diseases and the efforts to control them in a social and historical context. The primary focus is on England with its particular history, culture and traditions. The timescale covered is extensive and ambitious, and the many strands that came together in the nineteenth century to form the English public health service are clearly highlighted. However the main emphasis of the narrative is on developments from the second world war onwards, in some of which the author has had a degree of personal involvement as a schoolchild, medical student, hospital doctor, army doctor and public health physician.