This chapter fills a gap in curriculum history by providing a complete account of developments in school-based Health Education (HE) in the New South Wales (NSW) public education system from 1880 until 1989. A critical analysis of the data suggested there were three major eras in the curriculum history of HE that provided an understanding of the complex nature and developments in the subject in response to major political and socio-cultural markers. The first period of Hygiene Education (1880–1919) addressed the spread of venereal and infectious disease leading to high rates of mortality and morbidity in the wider community. The second period of Sex Education (1920–1949) complemented the eugenic agenda preoccupied with notions of reproduction and the survival of the population amidst threats of national deterioration following World War I (WWI). Although the first and second periods of school-based HE highlighted the subject was significant to counteracting trends of widespread health issues, it was during the third period (1950–1989) that the importance of the HE curriculum to the public health agenda was actualised. From the 1970s onwards, HE was positioned as a strategy to address the effects of a youth culture increasingly experimenting with drug use, sexual activity, risky road behaviours, and disengaging from physical activity (PA) (Tinning & Fitzclarence, 1992); while public fears over an Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic in the 1980s further elevated the value of HE and as such a more diverse range of health topics featured in the school curriculum.