Abstract
Anthropometric evidence such as height has been considered a major indicator of the social and economic well-being of past societies. To understand differences in attained height, the role of several determinants has been widely discussed. Since the 1990s, the impact of disease has shown to be a promising topic. In particular, research on the effect of smallpox on the height of the population in nineteenth-century England has triggered heated debate. Voth and Leunig argue that smallpox stunted height, but their results have been called into serious question by scholars such as Oxley, Razzell, Heintel and Baten. In this article, we introduce new sources and evidence for Thielt, a small rural town in Belgium. By linking military registers with smallpox listings, our analysis allows for a nuanced study of the height of conscripts. In early nineteenth-century Thielt, height differences between smallpox survivors and those who did not fall prey to the disease appear to be largely the result of household circumstances. By taking into account individual and familial attributes, we show the importance of the father's death and father's occupation for the son's height. However, smallpox did not have a statistically significant effect on height.
Highlights
Since the mid-1980s, the new discipline of historical anthropometry has made impressive contributions to a number of scholarly debates, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING? to those on the history of the standard of living.[1]
Contrary to what had previously been assumed, Floud, Fogel and Harris revealed that there was no unidirectional upward trend in the height of people in England after 1750.4 the English case has highlighted the importance of height as an indicator of health and wealth, historical anthropometry has received considerably less attention with respect to the Low Countries, and Belgium in particular.[5]
We examine the impact of one particular disease, namely smallpox, on height in nineteenth-century Belgium
Summary
To those on the history of the standard of living.[1]. As conventional monetized indicators such as wages, prices and per capita income proved inadequate for answering questions about eighteenthand nineteenth-century living standards, alternatives were sought in anthropometric measures.[2]. In an article from 1996, two economic historians, Hans-Joachim Voth and Timothy Leunig, claimed on the basis of historical evidence that the disease had a strong negative impact on the average height of survivors.[14] Using source material from nineteenth-century England, they concluded that smallpox reduced attained height by at least 1 inch (or 2.54 cm). These new findings gained a lot of attention and gave rise to a heated debate between Voth and Leunig on the one hand, and Mark Heintel, Jörg Baten, Peter Razzell and Deborah Oxley on the other Their comments and discussions resulted in nine articles, all published in the Economic History Review between 1996 and 2006.15 Voth and Leunig’s source material, as well as their methodology, were called into serious question. We conclude the article by discussing the implications of our work for the smallpox debate in particular, and historical anthropometry and morbidity in general
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