"Schneider and Lilienfeld have provided a volume that is sorely needed for all students of public health. The articles included are an excellent sampling of the classic studies and detail the development and evolution of public health."-Manning Feinleib, professor of epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health "A valuable book for the rapidly growing number of students in graduate and undergraduate schools and programs of public health. The editors are to be commended for their text selection and insightful comments that help frame the material."-Bernard Goldstein, former dean, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health Public health as a discipline grew out of traditional Western medicine but expanded to include interests in social policy, hygiene, epidemiology, infectious disease, sanitation, and health education. This book, the first of a two-volume set, is a collection of important and representative historical texts that serve to trace and to illuminate the development of conceptions, policies, and treatments in public health from the dawn of Western civilization through the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century. The editors provide annotated readings and biographical details to punctuate the historical timeline and to provide students with insights into the progression of ideas, initiatives, and reforms in the field. From Hippocrates and John Graunt in the early period, to John Snow and Florence Nightingale during the nineteenth-century sanitary reform movement, to Upton Sinclair and Margaret Sanger in the Progressive Era, readers follow the identification, evolution, and implementation of public health concepts as they came together under one discipline. Dona Schneider, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a professor and the director of Undergraduate Programs at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University. David E. Lilienfeld, M.D., M.P.H., is senior director for product safety at FibroGen, Inc. in South San Francisco, California.