Eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century ideas about the occurrence and spread of epidemic disease were complex and contested. Although many thought that diseases such as plague, typhus, and cholera were contagious and were communicated from person to person or via the medium of goods, others believed that they were the product of atmospheric change. Moreover, as historians have emphasized, the early nineteenth century saw a move from a multifactoral, climatic etiology toward one that prioritized specific local corruption of the atmosphere caused by putrefying animal and vegetable matter. In this paper, I extend this analysis by linking to recent literature on dirt and disgust and exploring the importance of theologies. I examine the work of two key figures in the history of British epidemiology, Charles Maclean and Thomas Southwood Smith, and demonstrate how the latter's increasing emphasis upon the causal agency of filth was structured by his Unitarian faith and his belief in a universally benevolent God. Keywords: public health, epidemiology, anticontagionism, miasma, climate, filth, sanitation, Unitarianism
...MoreDescription Looks at the epidemiologists Charles Maclean and Thomas Southwood Smith and their ideas on filth and its relation to Smith's Unitarian faith.
Book
Jacob Steere-Williams;
(2020)
The Filth Disease: Typhoid Fever and the Practices of Epidemiology in Victorian England
(/isis/citation/CBB965282260/)
Book
Hardy, Anne;
(2001)
Health and Medicine in Britain Since 1860
(/isis/citation/CBB000102017/)
Book
Jorland, Gérard;
(2010)
Une société à soigner: hygiène et salubrité publiques en France au XIXe siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB001024792/)
Article
Stark, James F.;
(2012)
Bacteriology in the Service of Sanitation: The Factory Environment and the Regulation of Industrial Anthrax in Late-Victorian Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB001210693/)
Article
Kelly, Catherine;
(2008)
“Not From the College, but Through the Public and the Legislature”: Charles Maclean and the Relocation of Medical Debate in the Early Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000930709/)
Article
Manikarnika Dutta;
(2021)
Cholera, British seamen and maritime anxieties in Calcutta, c.1830s–1890s
(/isis/citation/CBB631964896/)
Book
Gilbert, Pamela K.;
(2008)
Cholera and Nation: Doctoring the Social Body in Victorian England
(/isis/citation/CBB000830498/)
Book
Campkin, Ben;
Cox, Rosie;
(2007)
Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination
(/isis/citation/CBB001031281/)
Article
Hamlin, Christopher;
(2005)
Sanitary Policing and the Local State, 1873--1874: A Statistical Study of English and Welsh Towns
(/isis/citation/CBB000770535/)
Thesis
Partridge, Amy Ruth;
(2005)
Public Health for the People: The Use of Exhibition and Performance to Stagethe “Sanitary Idea” in Victorian Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB001561909/)
Book
Allen-Emerson, Michelle;
Choi, Tina Young;
Hamlin, Christopher;
(2012)
Sanitary Reform in Victorian Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB001550855/)
Book
J. Andrew Charles;
(2022)
A Sewer is the best medicine: Through plague, wars, famine and flood: Sir Robert Rawlinson and the nineteenth century public health revolution
(/isis/citation/CBB863945034/)
Article
Mills, Dennis;
(2009)
Public Health, Environment and Surveying
(/isis/citation/CBB000932792/)
Article
Dacome, Lucia;
(2001)
Living with the Chair: Private Excreta, Collective Health and Medical Authority in the Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000102232/)
Article
Brunton, Deborah;
(2005)
Evil Necessaries and Abominable Erections: Public Conveniences and Private Interests in the Scottish City, 1830--1870
(/isis/citation/CBB000770541/)
Article
Smith, S. D.;
(2001)
Coffee, Microscopy, and the Lancet's Analytical Sanitary Commission
(/isis/citation/CBB000770464/)
Article
Crook, Tom;
(2007)
Sanitary Inspection and the Public Sphere in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain: A Case Study in Liberal Governance
(/isis/citation/CBB001030540/)
Book
Allen, Michelle Elizabeth;
(2008)
Cleansing the City: Sanitary Geographies in Victorian London
(/isis/citation/CBB000830499/)
Article
Hanley, James G.;
(2002)
The Public's Reaction to Public Health: Petitions Submitted to Parliament, 1847--1848
(/isis/citation/CBB000770479/)
Book
Nigel Richardson;
(2008)
Typhoid in Uppingham: Analysis of a Victorian Town and School in Crisis, 1875–1877
(/isis/citation/CBB407718769/)
Be the first to comment!