The exponential rise of food poisoning during the past century has received less attention from historians than have bigger killers like cancer or heart disease. In Salmonella Infections, Networks of Knowledge, and Public Health in Britain, Hardy helps to rectify this lacuna in public-health history via a journey through many of the grubbier facets of British life—filthy knackers’ yards, poultry-packing plants, and greasy canteens. As a pathogen, salmonella was a product of increasingly complicated, globalized networks of food production, preparation, and consumption. As a concept, salmonella, and its many serotypes, was a product of equally complex scientific networks.
Hardy’s study is broken into three sections. The first one explores the ways in which the pathways of salmonella transmission were unraveled between around 1880 and 1940. Faced with an increasing incidence of the disease, public-health officials began the painstaking exploration of the spaces and highways along which the pathogen proliferated...