"Typhoid Mary" Strikes Back Bacteriological Theory and Practice in Early Twentieth-Century Public Health

Isis ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 608-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Walzer Leavitt
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-81
Author(s):  
Allison Leadley

Pendant près d’un demi-siècle, les concours du meilleur bébé constituaient l’une des attractions les plus populaires à l’Exposition nationale canadienne (CNE), une fête foraine annuelle à Toronto. Dans le cadre de ces concours, un panel de juges de la région (des médecins, généralement) attribuait des points aux bébés en fonction de catégories liées à « l’apparence saine, la beauté, les méthodes d’alimentation, l’absence de défauts physiques, la propreté, la tenue vestimentaire soignée et la proportion quant à la taille et le poids » avant d’attribuer le grand prix convoité. Tout comme d’autres sites de culture d’exposition, les concours du meilleur bébé misaient sur les pulsions scopophiliques du public et constituaient un mélange complexe de spectacle et d’édification. S’appuyant à la fois sur des études sur les concours de bébés et la culture d’exposition et sur une synthèse de la couverture médiatique des concours qui avaient lieu au CNE au début du vingtième siècle, Allison Leadley fait valoir que ces événements étaient emblématiques de la culture d’exposition dans leurs qualités formelles et stylistiques, mais aussi dans le travail performatif qu’ils mettaient en œuvre : la création, la promulgation et le maintien de nouvelles visions de la « normalité » façonnées par le domaine en pleine expansion de l’eugénisme.


Author(s):  
Charlotte Jones

The Introduction sets synthetic realism in the context of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century culture and aesthetics to show why literary realism needs to be grasped in metaphysical terms. Ranging across contemporary periodical culture and works of literature, philosophy, and science, it examines the ways in which realist theory and practice grapples with the recalcitrance of ‘reality’ as a shifting referential cipher. The Introduction also considers previous critical approaches and suggests that the effects of these encounters between realist aesthetics and philosophical discourse were more various, ambiguous, and complex than we might have thought. It concludes with brief overviews of the book’s five main chapters and elucidates the overarching arguments that are developed within them.


2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Minnett ◽  
Mary-Anne Poutanen

Responding to an appeal by city physicians and health reformers to destroy a prodigious disease carrier, the housefly, the Montreal Daily Star launched an island-wide contest in July 1912, offering prizes to children who collected the most dead flies. Nearly a thousand children, largely from working-class families, participated in a three-week-long "Swat the Fly" competition. Engaging Montreal children in this contest underscores a popular idea at the time that the best way to improve public health and combat the ignorance of a generation was to arm a new one with knowledge. While historians recognize that children's participation in campaigns to promote public health measures was pivotal to their success, youngsters are often rendered as passive recipients of reformers' efforts. We argue the contrary: children were active agents in public health crusades both as consumers and as advocates.


On Hospitals ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 3-30
Author(s):  
Sethina Watson

This chapter redefines the problem of hospitals in the medieval church. It surveys the spread of welfare foundations to the West and, especially, the intensive foundation of welfare houses, in many forms, during the ‘charitable revolution’ of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This messy picture of hospitals on the ground, ‘between church and world’, has never conformed to the legal model that historians have long held for hospitals, as ecclesiastical houses under the bishop (a model that rests fundamentally on the sixth-century laws of Justinian, the East Roman/Byzantine Emperor). This gap between the ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ of hospitals, so familiar in scholarship, has long been attributed to lax enforcement—and a general lack of concern—by bishops, popes, and canonists. This chapter redefines the problem as the model itself, which was established by early twentieth-century historians. It unpicks this model, identifying the national agendas that produced it and the frameworks that have continued to shape the field. It argues for canon law as a European question and for the place of welfare at the heart of medieval Christianity. The overall approach and structure of the book is then introduced.


Author(s):  
Jason Corburn

This article discusses the “connects and disconnects” between the fields of urban planning and public health from the late nineteenth through the twentieth century. It describes key events, actors, and institutions that shaped theory and practice in each field, and examines how each field addressed social, economic, and human-health disparities. The article also identifies political challenges for reconnecting planning and public health, including overemphasis on physical changes for improving social conditions, scientific rationality, and professionalization and fragmentation of the disciplines.


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