Health and Efficiency

Steffan Blayney's Health & Efficiency examines the emergence of a ‘science of work’ in Britain between 1870 and 1939 that equated worker health with national productivity.

Drawing on medical, industrial, and popular sources, Blayney shows how physiologists, psychologists, politicians, and employers sought to measure and optimize the working body—treating fatigue as a pathology to be eliminated.

The book also traces how these ideas spread into popular culture and wellness discourses while workers and unions negotiated, resisted, or adapted them.

Blayney argues that adopting efficiency framings shifted authority over health to external experts and often served capitalist interests.

The study highlights moments of resistance and alternative worker perspectives alongside the broader triumph of efficiency-driven approaches.