All this sewering and watering

This is not a good week for those who think there's too much public health in the BMJ. Unashamedly, we are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the 1848 Public Health Act, which established clean water and sewerage in England and Wales but also laid the foundations of public health.

There's plenty of contemporary public health—from Gabriel Scally in his recent advances article (p 584); Iqbal Sram and John Ashton in their millennium report to Edwin Chadwick (p 592); Kenneth Calman in his personal paper on the 1848 act (p …