as many medical professionals believed, but rather was convinced that some diseases were “nearly beyond the power of medicine, but the causes of which are known, and under certain circumstances may be avoided; and the conditions necessary for avoiding them are in a great measure in the power of communities, though beyond the power of many of the individuals composing them.” Alison proposed using the Scottish Poor Law to alleviate poverty as a means of assuaging disease, but the Poor Law Commissioners supported the position of Edwin Chadwick that disease was caused by filth and miasmas. Alison held to the contagion theory of disease, stating its spread was facilitated through poverty and overcrowding. He argued that poverty arose from social factors, not sin and sloth, and that higher wages should be paid to workers to mitigate disease by reducing the effect of overcrowding and destitution. In stating a case for fighting disease that appeared to be outside the province of contemporary medicine Alison was a pioneer of "political" medicine, as well as social epidemiology and public health. In his 1840 publication Observations on the management of the poor in Scotland and its effect on the health in the great towns, Alison argued that the government and its agencies had a major role in the alleviation of poverty and that this undertaking should not be left to religious groups or private charities. He advocated using public taxes to assist widows, orphans and the unemployed poor, and criticised the establishment for ignoring those who were fit but impoverished. The findings of the 1844 Royal Commission on Poor Laws (Scotland) lent support to Alison's viewpoint. Alison was very critical of the Scottish upper class for not providing what Alison believed to be adequate relief to the impoverished citizens of the country, while praising the English system, which had a long-established legislative framework to maintain minimum standards of relief for those suffering from poverty. Contrary to England's governmental standards, Scotland's system was based around voluntary charity by the wealthier members of society, justified by claiming that legal guarantees of support and relief for the impoverished would remove any motivation for the poor to work out of their situation and would rather create an incentive to stay stagnant as poor in order to receive governmental benefits. Alison counter argued, saying that it was unrelieved poverty that truly lowered the morality of the poor, and not