Ideas Of Hygiene Research Articles

Fabricating spaces and knowledge: the Berlin-Dalldorf Municipal Asylum for “Feeble-Minded” Children (1880–1900)

PurposeThis paper has two purposes. One is to examine the ways mentally disabled children were disciplined and cared for in Berlin, Germany/Prussia, at the end of the 19th century, by considering the way the architecture of the asylum affected the practices within it. The second purpose is to examine the manner in which the practices at the Dalldorf Asylum, especially the administrative paperwork, fabricated and stabilized the medico-pedagogical category of “feeble-mindedness”.Design/methodology/approachThis paper engages with reflections on asylum architecture and its connection to disciplining bodies as shown in Disability History and linking these insights to recent scholarship from the field of Science and Technology Studies on the fabrication of knowledge through observation. Drawing on microhistory as methodology it examines the fabrication of “feeble-mindedness” with and within the Dalldorf Asylum, focusing on architecture and design as well as administrative practices.FindingsThe analysis of the asylum's architecture reveals how certain ideas of hygiene and control derived from 19th century psychiatry, along with personal attentiveness and individualized learning were incorporated into the building, creating the notion of a “feeble-minded child” as being simultaneously dangerous and in danger. The paper further shows how the professionals involved were struggling with diagnosing these children, further showcasing that the space as well as the categorization of children, oscillating between psychiatry and pedagogy, has to be understood as contested.Originality/valueThis paper engages findings on the disciplining structures organizing everyday life within the asylum with concepts of fabricating knowledge as central to science studies. The Dalldorf Asylum, the earliest state-funded asylum for mentally disabled children in Germany and largely understudied, is used as the main research object. A microhistorical approach allows to make visible the intricate yet mundane practices involved in stabilizing the category of “feeble-mindedness”.

Circulation of Medical Knowledge and Techniques through Film in Japan, 1929–1941

Several historians have analyzed the various uses of medical films and have examined how cinematography changed the epistemology of medical doctors, or how governments and private companies utilized moving pictures for promoting ideas of hygiene among the general public. But historians have paid little attention to those medical films that were circulated in Japan. Some Japanese surgeons recorded their operations and screened surgical films in academic meetings to convey their techniques effectively. Others used moving pictures to educate medical students, who had limited opportunities to observe professors’ skills in schools. In 1929, this type of medical film began to circulate in Japan: a pharmaceutical company imported German medical films while one film company collaborated with a medical professor to record the first surgical film in the country. The 1930s witnessed the wide dissemination of medical films that followed the introduction of small-gauge film to Japan, and a flourishing medical film production continued until the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941. This article examines why and how these medical films were domestically circulated in Japan and internationally screened outside Japan by looking at not only how medical practitioners used films but also how they successfully cooperated with a pharmaceutical company, filmmakers, technicians, and government.

Hand hygiene in hospitals: anatomy of a revolution

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) affect hundreds of millions of individuals worldwide. Performing hand hygiene is widely accepted as a key strategy of infection prevention and control (IPC) to prevent HAIs, as healthcare workers' contaminated hands are the vehicle most often implicated in the cross-transmission of pathogens in health care. Over the last 20 years, a paradigm shift has occurred in hand hygiene: the change from handwashing with soap and water to using alcohol-based hand rubs. In order to put this revolution into context and understand how such a change was able to be implemented across so many different cultures and geographic regions, it is useful to understand how the idea of hygiene in general, and hand hygiene specifically, developed. This paper aims to examine how ideas about hygiene and hand hygiene evolved from ancient to modern times, from a ubiquitous but local set of ideas to a global phenomenon. It reviews historical landmarks from the first known documented recipe for soap by the Babylon civilization to the discovery of chlorine, and significant contributions by pioneers such as Antoine Germain Labarraque, Alexander Gordon, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ignaz Philip Semmelweis, Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister. It recalls that handwashing with soap and water appeared in guidelines to prevent HAIs in the 1980s; describes why alcohol-based hand rub replaced this as the central tool for action within a multi-modal improvement strategy; and looks at how the World Health Organization and other committed stakeholders, governments and dedicated IPC staff are championing hand hygiene globally.

1920·30년대 독일 공동주택 발코니의 공간구성 특성에 관한 고찰 - 채광, 환기, 일광 중심의 위생적 특성 반영을 중심으로 -

The purpose of this study was to analyze the spacial characteristics of the balcony space of the german multi-family housing from 1920 to 1930 in connection with the aspects of hygine and healthy living which were the main idea of the modern housing movement. The results of this study were as follows; the idea of hygiene and healthy Living with the focus on sunlight and fresh air had influence on the reillumination of the balcony space to function as the hygienic space. The balcony space used for take a sunbath and a open air bath being were provided from the large scaled greened communal outdoor space of the new modern housing blocks. To act as a hygienic space for sunbath and air bath with the emotional effects on relaxation the balcony space had to have an appropriate condition in regard to site situation, orientation to sun, connection to other rooms as well as the spacial arrangement form.

Meio ambiente e saúde pública: a urbanização de Nossa Senhora do Desterro no século XIX

Nossa Senhora do Desterro, capital of the Province of Santa Catarina went through major urban changes in 19th century. Until then it was a peripheral city, despite a strategic shipping routes in the south of Brazil. In middle of 19th century a significant urban and commercial growth occurs, and as consequence, an increase in the problems of public health and supplying. Parallel to this process of development of the urban center of Desterro and the biggest commercial contact with the capital of the Empire, new uses had started to be attributed to the beaches and rivers and some customs had undergone a redefinition process. This has generated debates and questions about practices that until then were common as the sewage disposal on beaches and the laundering clothes in rivers and streams of the city. This text is an analysis of this process of transformation of practices and customs, an examination of the new local perceptions about the ideas of hygiene and social life.

Bathroom Transformation: From Hygiene to Well-Being?

ABSTRACTWestern bathroom standards, which have long been dominated by ideas of hygiene, seem to be in the process of change. Whereas transformations of kitchens have been well studied, little attention has been directed towards the contemporary development of bathrooms. This article provides a case study of the transformation in design, use, and meaning of Danish bathrooms, drawing lines back in history but focusing mainly on current changes. The bathroom is seen as a complex arena where many different forces interact. The study applies the regime concept to organize the story and outlines the developments in physical frameworks, practices, and images. It is based on a combination of literature survey, review of magazine and media coverage, visits to exhibitions, and qualitative interviews. The article outlines changes in Danish bathrooms and analyzes how new trends appear in relation to actual bathroom renovations. In particular, the notion of well-being is highlighted as challenging existing hygiene ideas.

The Cleaners You Aren’t Meant to See: Order, Hygiene and Everyday Politics in a Bangkok Shopping Mall

Although thousands of rural Thai migrants to Bangkok are employed as janitors, to date little research has been conducted on this industry. This paper addresses this lacuna by providing a detailed ethnography of working practices among cleaners in a Bangkok shopping mall, focusing upon how ideas of hygiene, order, and discipline are used to construct a “modern” janitorial workforce. The paper discusses the significance of these qualities in terms of a broader plan to “civilize” rural Thais, itself part of a wider project to foster rapid economic growth and bring global recognition to Thailand. Finally, by focusing on the small freedoms they seek as part of a “hidden transcript” of everyday resistance, the paper considers the cleaners’ responses to attempts to “modernize” and “civilize” them through rules aimed at limiting their movements and proscribing their behaviors in the mall.

The need for a taxonomy of health in the study of African therapeutics

Most medical ethnographies in Africa have focused on notions and taxonomies of disease, their causes and the therapies available to treat them. This ‘negative’ pathology-oriented perspective misses, or underplays, important although often unlabelled practices and ideas of hygiene, adaptation to the environment, normative health, and the conscious maintenance of health ideals, all of which are increasingly important in planning health programs based on popular support and rooted in cultural values. It is argued in the paper that medical anthropology needs to consider, as a single domain, both disease and health, both taxonomies of disease and of health, and the study of this expanded domain. In order to more adequately identify and analyze such an expanded domain, the paper reviews numerous ethnographic works on medicine and health in Africa—including Heinz on the !Ko, Evans-Pritchard on the Azande. Buxton on the Mandari, Ngubane on the Nyuswa-Zulu, and Janzen on the Kongo—exploring their potential for understanding alternative logics in therapeutics and for explaining sources of change in medical and health thought.