Eighteenth-century France is famous for its dynamic public sphere. And what did people want to talk about? Often, health. Ordinary people were keen to learn about the human body and discover new ways to care for it. Determined to shape what we would now call public health and interested in bolstering their reputations, medical practitioners shared their research and advice in public venues.

But the public they hoped to guide grew larger and more confident in their own assessments, and thus more willing to question and even reject medical expertise. Doctors encountered significant resistance when they championed controversial new technologies like inoculation or vaccination or argued against popular treatments like animal magnetism (mesmerism).

Increasingly pessimistic about their capacity to guide public opinion, practitioners relied more and more on mandates and regulations to shape public health as the century wore on – a choice that often provoked backlash and undermined public trust. Making and Breaking Public Health argues that public health suffered a crisis at the moment of its crystallization, a paradox that continues to reverberate in the present.