The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs - Softcover

Barnes, David S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1421425653 ISBN 13: 9781421425658

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018

Synopsis

Late in the summer of 1880, a wave of odors enveloped large portions of Paris. As the stench lingered, outraged residents feared that the foul air would breed an epidemic. Fifteen years later―when the City of Light was in the grips of another Great Stink―the public conversation about 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.

About this title

Book Description

Explores the scientific and social factors that continue to influence the public's lingering uncertainty over how disease can―and cannot―be spread.

About the Author

David S. Barnes is an associate professor of the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania.

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1421425653
• ISBN 13: 9781421425658
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328