IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB476408525

Can’t Boil, Won’t Boil: Material Inequality, Information, and Disease Avoidance during a Typhoid Epidemic in Tampere, Finland, in 1916 (2024)

Jarmo Peltola (Author)
Sakari Saaritsa (Author)
Henri Mikkola (Author)

Social Science History
Volume: 48
Issue: 2
Pages: 203-232

DOI: 10.1017/ssh.2023.34

URI: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-science-history/article/abs/cant-boil-wont-boil-material-inequality-information-and-disease-avoidance-during-a-typhoid-epidemic-in-tampere-finland-in-1916/24DCB21AE6DCF0360E3ED494FC524497

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Public health Epidemics Urban history Water Typhoid fever Sanitation 20th century, early Finland

Historical research on urban epidemics has focused on the interaction of diseases with social and spatial gradients, such as class, ethnicity, or neighborhood. Even sophisticated historical studies usually lack data on health-related behavior or health-related perceptions, which modern analysts tend to emphasize. With detailed source material from the Finnish city of Tampere during a typhoid epidemic in 1916, we are able to combine both dimensions and look at how material and social constraints interacted with behavior and knowledge to produce unequal outcomes. We use data on socioeconomic status, location, and physical habitat as well as the self-reported behavior and expressed understandings of transmission mechanisms of the infected people to identify the determinants of some falling ill earlier or later than others. Applying survival analysis to approximately 2,500 cases, we show that disease avoidance behavior was deficient and constrained by physical habitat, regardless of considerable public health campaigning. Behavioral guidelines issued by authorities were sub-optimally communicated, unrealistic, and inadequately followed. Boiling water was hampered by shared kitchens, and access to laundry houses for additional hygiene was uneven. Centralized chemical water purification finally leveled the playing field by socializing the cost of prevention and eliminating key sources of unequal risk.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB476408525/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Guido Zucconi; (2022)
La città degli igienisti. Riforme e utopie sanitarie nell’Italia umbertina (/isis/citation/CBB086521160/)

Article Dagenais, Michèle; Durand, Caroline; (2006)
Cleaning, Draining, and Sanitizing the City: Conceptions and Uses of Water in the Montreal Region (/isis/citation/CBB001030869/)

Article Hardy, Anne; (2014)
Scientific Strategy and Ad Hoc Response: The Problem of Typhoid in America and England, C. 1910--50 (/isis/citation/CBB001214576/)

Article Rodríguez-Ocaña, Esteban; (2010)
Salud pública y política agraria liberal en España. La Inspección de Sanidad del campo (1910--1918) (/isis/citation/CBB001021986/)

Book Troesken, Werner; (2004)
Water, Race, and Disease (/isis/citation/CBB000610297/)

Book Nigel Richardson; (2008)
Typhoid in Uppingham: Analysis of a Victorian Town and School in Crisis, 1875–1877 (/isis/citation/CBB407718769/)

Book Jacob Steere-Williams; (2020)
The Filth Disease: Typhoid Fever and the Practices of Epidemiology in Victorian England (/isis/citation/CBB965282260/)

Book Espinosa, Mariola; (2009)
Epidemic Invasions: Yellow Fever and the Limits of Cuban Independence, 1878--1930 (/isis/citation/CBB001020061/)

Article Chiffoleau, Sylvia; (2013)
Entre bienfaisance, contrôle des populations et agenda international: la politique sanitaire du mandat français en Syrie et au Liban (/isis/citation/CBB001213546/)

Article Karimkhanzand, Mostafa; (2013)
Iranian Medicine's Encounter with the Cholera and Plague Epidemics in Qajar Iran in the 19th Century (/isis/citation/CBB001510311/)

Article Martín, Abel Fernando Martínez; Abril, Fred Gustavo Manrique; Álvarez, Bernardo Francisco Meléndez; (2007)
La pandemia de gripa de 1918 en Bogotá (/isis/citation/CBB000831359/)

Thesis Shehab Ismail; (2017)
Engineering Metropolis: Contagion, Capital, and the Making of British Colonial Cairo, 1882-1922 (/isis/citation/CBB998318630/)

Article Armiero, Marco; (2011)
Enclosing the Sea: Remaking Work and Leisure Spaces on the Naples Waterfront, 1870--1900 (/isis/citation/CBB001212863/)

Article Richardson, Nigel; (2007)
The Uppingham Typhoid Outbreaks of 1875--1877: A Rural Case-Study in Public Health Reform (/isis/citation/CBB000772503/)

Article Steere-Williams, Jacob; (2010)
The Perfect Food and the Filth Disease: Milk-borne Typhoid and Epidemiological Practice in Late Victorian Britain (/isis/citation/CBB001034274/)

Book Lancaster, Brian; (2001)
The “Croydon Case”: Dirty Old Town to Model Town: The Making of the Croydon Board of Health and the Croydon Typhoid Epidemic of 1852-3 (/isis/citation/CBB000771195/)

Chapter Bernabeu Mestre, Josep; (2003)
Cultura, medi ambient i salut: a propòsit de l'epidèmia de febre tifoide d'Orxeta (1912-1913) (/isis/citation/CBB000320027/)

Thesis Hinman, Sarah Elizabeth; (2007)
Spatial and Temporal Structure of Typhoid Fever in Washington, D.C., 1895--1909: A Geographic Information Systems Exploration of Urban Health Concerns (/isis/citation/CBB001561541/)

Book Mohajeri, Shahrooz; (2005)
100 Jahre Berliner Wasserversorgung und Abwasserentsorgung 1840--1940 (/isis/citation/CBB000831164/)

Article Cirillo, Vincent J.; (2014)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859--1930): Physician During the Typhoid Epidemic in the Anglo-Boer War (1899--1902) (/isis/citation/CBB001421975/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}