Doctors, workers and the scientific cosmology of the industrial world: the social construction of "health" and the "homo hygienicus."

Abstract

Germany's transition from an agrarian to an industrial society (c. 1870-1914) coincided with a change from extensive to intensive use of labour: instead of short-term exhaustion of the proletariat by work (the Manchester School), it became necessary to secure permanently a labour reserve of sufficient quality and numbers. Towns and factories grew apace during industrialization. The industrial towns were swamped by unforeseen social problems: apart from infrastructural needs such as drainage and water-supply, towns wrestled with the massive problems of housing shortages, lack of food and clothing, infectious disease and malnutrition (especially among mothers and children) and last, but not least, the inadequacy of the workers' own behaviour as a response to the new structures of their lives. For the 'freed' and 'alienated' working population, industrialization meant a hitherto unimaginable change in their traditional pattern of life. While the new life in the industrial towns offered new chances and new freedoms, it also held new dangers. Workers and their families abandoned the 'natural' behavioural guidelines of their country origins and their 'natural' knowledge in their encounters with sickness, invalidity, old age and death. In addition, they lost the systems of bonds and supports previously represented by relatives, landowners, co-operatives and villages. Large existential communities were reduced to small industrial family units. At the same time, the worker was thrown back on his labour as his only means of subsistence, with the result that for more and more people health and productive strength assumed ever greater importance. On the other hand, the dangers to health in the industrial areas were high:2 tuberculosis, which was rampant in the towns and cities, was known as a 'proletarian disease', pure and simple.