| Description |
1 online resource (xi, 314 pages) : illustrations, maps |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
Introduction -- "Not everything that stinks kills" : odors and germs on the streets of Paris, 1880 -- The santiarian's legacy, or how health became public -- Taxonomies of transmission : local etiologies and the equivocal triumph of germ theory -- Putting germ theory into practice -- Toward a cleaner and healthier republic -- Odors and "infection," 1880 and beyond -- The legacy of the twentieth century. |
| Summary |
Late in the summer of 1880, a wave of odors emanated from the sewers of Paris. As the stench lingered, outraged residents feared that the foul air would breed an epidemic. Fifteen years later & mdash;when the City of Light was in the grips of another Great Stink & mdash;the landscape of health and disease had changed dramatically. Parisians held their noses and protested, but this time few feared that the odors would spread disease. Historian David S. Barnes examines the birth of a new microbe-centered science of public health during the 1880s and 1890s, when the germ theory of disease burst into public consciousness. Tracing a series of developments in French science, medicine, politics, and culture, Barnes reveals how the science and practice of public health changed during the heyday of the Bacteriological Revolution. Despite its many innovations, however, the new science of germs did not entirely sweep away the older "sanitarian" view of public health. The longstanding conviction that disease could be traced to filthy people, places, and substances remained strong, even as it was translated into the language of bacteriology. Ultimately, the attitudes of physicians and the French public were shaped by political struggles between republicans and the clergy, by aggressive efforts to educate and "civilize" the peasantry, and by long-term shifts in the public's ability to tolerate the odor of bodily substances. This fascinating study sheds new light on the scientific and social factors that continue to influence the public's lingering uncertainty over how disease can & mdash;and cannot & mdash;be spread. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Social medicine -- Europe -- History.
|
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Social medicine. |
|
Europe. |
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History. |
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Social medicine -- France -- History.
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France. |
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Diseases -- Europe -- History.
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Diseases. |
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Diseases -- France -- History.
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Sanitation -- history. |
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Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice. |
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Communicable Disease Control -- history. |
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Bacteriology -- history. |
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Public Health -- history. |
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France. |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
|
|
History.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Barnes, David S. Great stink of Paris and the nineteenth-century struggle against filth and germs. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006 (DLC) 2005023385 |
| ISBN |
9780801888731 (electronic book) |
|
0801888735 (electronic book) |
|
0801883490 (hardcover ; alkaline paper) |
|
9780801883491 |
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