Political Ideology and Public Health in the Nineteenth Century

1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Tesh
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Disease Prevention ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Western World ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Personal Behavior ◽  
Epidemic Diseases ◽  
Disease Causality

A study of early-nineteenth-century disease prevention practices in the Western world reveals four competing theories about the causes of epidemic diseases: a contagion theory, a personal behavior theory, a supernatural theory, and an environmental theory. With the exception of the supernatural approach, these explanations for illness closely resemble the theories advanced today to account for chronic diseases. In both periods disease causality theories have been more than medical postulates; they have also implied political ideologies.

Liberalism and Democracy

2018 ◽  
pp. 179-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Philp ◽  
Eduardo Posada-Carbó
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Skills ◽  
Politically Active

Liberalism was the most powerful emergent political ideology across early nineteenth-century southern Europe (this chapter does not deal with the Ottoman world). There was more support for ‘freedom’ and ‘liberal’ values than for ‘democracy’. Liberalism indeed initially aimed to realize some democratic aspirations, while averting the worst features of French revolutionary experience. Liberal revolutionaries of the 1820s advocated extensive political participation to support effective nation-building. But during the 1830s, the form of liberalism associated with the French Doctrinaires became ascendant; in this view, political skills were found only among people of ‘capacity’; the preferred form of representative government was one restricting political rights to higher taxpayers. Politically active people calling themselves ‘democrats’ (as became more common from this time) usually operated from within liberal ranks but were critical of narrow versions of this creed: the democratic cause gained new definition and point in this context.

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