This book looks at how the workplace was transformed through a greater awareness of the roles that germs played in English working lives from c.1880 to 1945. Cutting across a diverse array of occupational settings – such as the domestic kitchen, the milking shed, the factory, and the Post Office – it offers new perspectives on the history of the germ sciences. It brings to light the ways in which germ scientists sought to transform English working lives through new types of technical and educational interventions that sought to both eradicate and instrumentalise germs. It then asks how we can measure and judge the success of such interventions by tracing how workers responded to the potential applications of the germ sciences through their participation in friendly societies, trade unions, colleges, and volunteer organisations. Throughout the book, close attention is paid to reconstructing vernacular traditions of working with invisible life in order to better understand both the successes and failures of the germ sciences to transform the working practices and material conditions of different workplaces. The result is a more diverse history of the peoples, politics, and practices that went into shaping the germ sciences in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England.
...MoreReview Arthur McIvor (2022) Review of "Germs in the English Workplace, c.1880–1945". Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (pp. 750-752).
Similar Citations
Book
Tim Jenkins;
(2023)
The British Aircraft Industry during the First World War: The Dope Scandal
Book
Dr Janet Greenlees;
(2019)
When the Air Became Important: A Social History of the New England and Lancashire Textile Industries
Article
Patterson, Andrea;
(2009)
Germs and Jim Crow: The Impact of Microbiology on Public Health Policies in Progressive Era American South
Thesis
Megan Kari Nixon;
(2015)
'Kept From All Contagion': Germ Theory, Disease, and the Dilemma of Human Contact in Late Nineteenth-Century Literature
Book
Daniel Trabalski;
(2023)
Weg vom Fenster: Die Staublunge der Ruhrbergleute zwischen wissenschaftlicher Entdeckung, betrieblicher Regulierung und gesellschaftlichem Vergessen in der Bundesrepublik
Article
Flavio D'Abramo;
Sybille Neumeyer;
(2020)
A Historical and Political Epistemology of Microbes
Article
Labna Fernandez Erana;
(2025)
Keeping the house clean: Women and germ theories in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Britain
Book
James P. Kraft;
(2021)
Havoc and Reform: Workplace Disasters in Modern America
Article
Richardson, Ruth;
(2013)
Inflammation, Suppuration, Putrefaction, Fermentation: Joseph Lister's Microbiology
Article
Barry, Stéphane;
(2008)
La peste: de la 3e pandémie à sa réémergence actuelle
Article
Lozano, Sonia;
(2008)
Importation et destin de la première théorie des germes au Mexique: développement des premières recherches sur la fièvre jaune dans les années 1880
Thesis
Weiss, Kim Morrison;
(2013)
Louis Pasteur's Butterflies: The Role of the “Sericicultrices” in the Metamorphosis of a Nineteenth-Century Germ Theory
Article
Junaidi;
Lila Pelita Hati;
Nurhabsyah;
Kiki Maulana Affandi;
(2023)
Weaving Hope in Tanah Deli: Life and Healthcare of Plantation Workers in the East Sumatra's Plantation Belt, 1870-1940
Book
Lee, R. Alton;
(2007)
From Snake Oil to Medicine: Pioneering Public Health
Article
Hannah-Louise Clark;
(2021)
Of Jinn Theories and Germ Theories: Translating Microbes, Bacteriological Medicine, and Islamic Law in Algeria
Article
Guerrini, Anita;
(2012)
Health, National Character and the English Diet in 1700
Article
Sarasohn, Lisa T.;
(2013)
“That Nauseous Venomous Insect”: Bedbugs in Early Modern England
Article
Almeida, Maria Antónia Pires de;
(2013)
Epidemics in the News: Health and Hygiene in the Press in Periods of Crisis
Article
Maria Carla Garbarino;
(2017)
Adelchi Negri e la diagnosi della rabbia
Article
James F. Stark;
Catherine Stones;
(2019)
Constructing Representations of Germs in the Twentieth Century
Be the first to comment!