Public health is a slightly nebulous concept. It is defined here as the “… organised activity of society to promote, protect, improve … the health of individuals, specific groups or the entire population. It is a combination of sciences, skills and values that function through collective societal activities … The term can describe a concept, a social institution, a set of scientific and professional disciplines and technologies, and a form of practice. It encompasses a wide range of services, institutions, professional groups, trades, and unskilled occupations … ”. Although it is possible to grasp this as a single concept and to argue for its immense importance, it does raise problems for the dictionary compiler.
A proper dictionary of public health would contain practically the whole contents of major dictionaries of medicine and nursing, a dictionary of public administration and management, large chunks of material from dictionaries of sociology and of political science, extracts from dictionaries of plumbing and architecture, and much more. The editor of this book is also the editor of the excellent Dictionary of Epidemiology (Last, 2001). I would have expected this book to include virtually the whole of that work, and a great deal extra. Just a glance at the list of recommended reading at the back of this book will illustrate the problem of trying to be comprehensive in such a wide‐ranging field. The alphabetical range of sources used starts with Abercrombie's Penguin Dictionary of Sociology, Allaby's Oxford Dictionary of Ecology, the Atmospheric Air Quality Glossary, Barker's Social Work Dictionary, Bender's Dictionary of Food & Nutrition and Black's Oxford Dictionary of Economics … all the way to the WHO Glossary on Solid Waste, Yassi et al. Basic Environmental Health and Zenz Occupational Medicine. Obviously fitting all of this into a single small, relatively cheap and compact volume would be impossible. Instead what we have is an alphabetical sequence of just under 5,000 terms considered to be of particular relevance, each with a paragraph or so of clear and, as far as I can judge, accurate definition, at a level which should be comprehensible by a well‐educated adult lay enquirer.
Given the nature of the subject it is inevitable that parts of many of the definitions are irrelevant. No‐one who wants to know what a “bird” is would look in a dictionary of public health to find out that it is a vertebrate characterised by possessing beaks and feathers, and reproducing by means of shelled eggs hatched outside the body, are they? On the other hand the cross‐references to psittacosis, ornithosis, histoplasmosis, West Nile virus, and, of course, avian influenza are of importance. The cross‐referencing is, on the whole, very good. I noticed a few exceptions – there are entries on Acupuncture Chinese Medicine and Moxibustion but the entry on Moxibustion is not cross‐referred to the other two, just for example. Similarly, there is a crisp, clear definition of Economy Class Syndrome but no cross‐references from Peripheral Venous Thrombosis under the letters P, V or T. There are entries on some drugs and on some potentially hazardous chemicals, but by no means on all of them. They tend to be entered under their proper names rather than under initials or under slang terms. Given the enormous number of these it might, perhaps, have been better to have excluded them altogether and referred the reader on to alternative reference sources.
These are minor quibbles however. On the whole, the editor has done an extremely efficient job. If you need a compact dictionary of public health then, undoubtedly, this is a very good one. The only question then is whether you, or anyone else, actually want a compact dictionary of public health. I find it very hard to envisage anyone who would use this dictionary as a first port of call to any great extent. There are some reference books where it is clearly possible to see who will use them and which specialised libraries will want them as major reference tools. In this instance, however, I can think of a very wide range of libraries where this book would be a useful supplement to existing reference sources, but I cannot think of any for which it would be the first choice. Public reference libraries, clinical medical libraries, and libraries catering for public service management may wish to consider this book as an addition to their reference collections, but I would not see it as a first choice of purchase.
