“The Most Unhealthy Spots in the World”: Thinking, Dwelling In, and Shaping Pathogenic Environments (2023)
Guillaume Linte (Author)
Paul-Arthur Tortosa (Author)
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Volume: 65
Issue: 1
Pages: 9-30
This paper deals with the history of “pathogenic environments,” understood as places, regions, or environments whose characteristics are considered to be the origin of diseases in the human beings. While some specific environments were almost universally considered noxious, some others had a different trajectory. Crowded and poorly-ventilated premises as well as tropical regions were perceived as “the most unhealthy spots in the world.” However, the progressive “medicalisation” of hospitals transformed what were previously considered to be hellholes into therapeutic places. This does not mean that iatrogenic diseases disappeared, but that hospitals tended to be seen in a more positive way. Similarly, European colonial expansion changed medical perspectives on tropical regions. Western physicians became increasingly convinced not only that could they prepare Europeans for long travel, but also that they could shape foreign environments. For instance, the perception of the Caribbean climate gradually changed “from deadly to healthy” from the middle of the 19th century onwards. Changes in perceptions could thus follow scientific progress, but also arise from political agendas and stigmatising narratives. Victims of the harmful influences of a pathogenic environment were often presented as responsible for their fate. For instance, some were accused of not carrying out the instructions delivered by the administrative or medical authorities. The process of (un)making pathogenic environments thus offers privileged access to the understanding of the relationship between health and environment. This paper provides situated accounts of how some places or regions came to be perceived as pathogenic or ceased to be so. It explores avenues of research, such as the study of lay perspectives on health and environment, the dangers of travel itself, and the connection between environmental health and military medicine.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Inglis, Kerri A.;
(2013)
Ma'i Lepera: Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i
Book
Khalid, Amna;
Johnson, Ryan;
(2011)
Public Health in the British Empire: Intermediaries, Subordinates, and Public Health Practice, 1850--1960
Book
Pratik Chakrabarti;
(2017)
Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics
Article
Marta Hanson;
(2017)
Visualizing the Geography of the Diseases of China: Western Disease Maps from Analytical Tools to Tools of Empire, Sovereignty, and Public Health Propaganda, 1878–1929
Article
Carey, Mark;
(2014)
Climate, Medicine, and Peruvian Health Resorts
Article
Kashin, Konstantin;
Pollock, Ethan;
(2013)
Public Health and Bathing in Late Imperial Russia: A Statistical Approach
Book
Hugh Cagle;
(2018)
Assembling the Tropics: Science and Medicine in Portugal's Empire, 1450-1700
Article
Arnold, David J.;
(2012)
The Medicalization of Poverty in Colonial India
Book
Abigail A. Dumes;
(1920)
Divided Bodies: Lyme Disease, Contested Illness, and Evidence-Based Medicine
Book
Sellers, Christopher C.;
Melling, Joseph;
(2012)
Dangerous Trade: Histories of Industrial Hazard across a Globalizing World
Book
Daniel Trabalski;
(2023)
Weg vom Fenster: Die Staublunge der Ruhrbergleute zwischen wissenschaftlicher Entdeckung, betrieblicher Regulierung und gesellschaftlichem Vergessen in der Bundesrepublik
Book
Jones, Greta;
Malcolm, Elizabeth;
(1999)
Medicine, disease, and the State in Ireland, 1650-1940
Article
Álvarez, Adriana;
(2010)
La experiencia de ser un 'niño débil y enfermo' lejos de su hogar: el caso del Asilo Marítimo, Mar del Plata (1893--1920)
Article
Kyu-hwan Sihn;
(2017)
Reorganizing Hospital Space: The 1894 Plague Epidemic in Hong Kong and the Germ Theory
Article
Divya Rama Gopalakrishnan;
(2022)
Gomastahs, Peons, Police and Chowdranies: The Role of Indian Subordinate in the Functioning of the Lock Hospitals and the Indian Contagious Diseases Act, 1805 to 1889
Book
Hassan, Narin;
(2011)
Diagnosing Empire: Women, Medical Knowledge, and Colonial Mobility
Book
Kristin Hussey;
(2021)
Imperial Bodies in London: Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880–1914
Article
Amaral, Isabel;
(2012)
Bactéria ou parasita? a controvérsia sobre a etiologia da doença do sono e a participação portuguesa, 1898--1904
Book
Yip, Ka-che;
(2009)
Disease, Colonialism, and the State: Malaria in Modern East Asian History
Book
Abrams, Jeanne E.;
(2013)
Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health
Be the first to comment!