Quarantinism and Sanitarism as Strategies for Social Order’s Management and Epidemic Control in 19th-Century Europe

Abstract

The history of social order’s management and epidemic control in nineteenth-century Europe provides a wealth of evidence for understanding how and why different countries responded to the challenges of dangerous infectious diseases. The two most significant preventive strategies used in the nineteenth century were quarantinism, which consists in limiting active economic activities, and sanitarism, which involves improving the sanitary conditions of the population. In 1947, the German physician and medical historian Erwin Ackerknecht, for the first time analyzed these strategies and thus initiated a discussion of the determinants of medical knowledge and public health. This debate is still ongoing and has been reinvigorated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Familiarity with some of the points made in that debate may be very useful today, as it will not only give a fuller impression of how some areas of historical science have developed, but also shed new light on the question of how humanitarians make their judgments about such a significant area as the field of public health. The article examines three plots: 1) the explanatory model of quarantinism and sanitarism proposed by Ackerknecht, 2) use of his model by a new generation of scholars who entered this debate in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and 3) the experience of reinterpreting this model to reflect new approaches, in particular the expansive model proposed by Peter Baldwin.