William Farr, the doctor, sanitarian, and statistician, was present at the foundation of the Social Science Association at Brougham's house in 1857. He served on its Council, was President of its Public Health Department in 1866, and ‘found like-minded men’ at the SSA. What Eyler has termed ‘Victorian socio-medical liberalism’ in relation to Farr, or ‘the interplay of three ideas cherished among prominent Victorian professional men: political liberalism, an environmental approach to the understanding of human misery, and a belief that social progress would follow the construction of a positive science of statecraft’, captures very well the synthesis of medical reform, social improvement and expertise that characterised the outlook of public health reformers at the SSA. Though largely staffed by doctors, the department never functioned as a forum for the exchange of medical knowledge nor formulated its own ‘theory of disease’ at a time when controversy over disease causation was at its most intense. Rather, it sought to reform the institutions which influenced public health by legislation, leading the campaign for the improvement of administration which gave rise to the Royal Sanitary Commission in 1869 and subsequent legislation in 1871, 1872, and 1875.