HIST 261 Thesis
Oct. 29th, 2002 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldHi, everyone!
Can I get some feedback on this thesis for an upcoming term paper, between 2500 and 3000 words in length?
***
The 1856 cholera epidemic was one of the last major recurrences of cholera in Britain, as steady improvements in London's infrastructure and the advance of medical knowledge limited recurrences of cholera, among other epidemic diseases. Indeed, the 1856 epidemic ended largely because of the intervention of John Snow, who famously identified the contaminated water at the public pump in St. James' Parish as the source of the epidemic, prefiguring the germ theory of disease and the development of a modern medical science.
This intervention prefigured the development of the British state, in broader matters of public affairs as in the specific field of public health, as an essentially regulatory entity concerned with ensuring the proper functioning of the bodies of its subjects. As explored by Foucault, western European governments in the early modern era were concerned with prohibiting improper behaviour on the parts of their subjects, whether sexual, religious, or political. It was only in the 19th century, however, that the growth of modern medical science allowed the regulation of disease.
This regulation was manifested not only in terms of action against disease-causing elements--whether infestations of bacteria or virii or inadequate civic sanitation--but against behaviours, particularly those characteristic among working-class communities and the poor, which were viewed as causative or aggravating factors in illness. The regulation and limitation of disease was a primary function of the 19th century state; the ability to act in this area was widely seen as a necessary precondition for modernization, as the roughly contemporary case of the autonomous khedivate of Egypt demonstrates.
***
Cool link: The on-line edition of On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, by John Snow, M.D., available at
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/snowbook2.html
Can I get some feedback on this thesis for an upcoming term paper, between 2500 and 3000 words in length?
***
The 1856 cholera epidemic was one of the last major recurrences of cholera in Britain, as steady improvements in London's infrastructure and the advance of medical knowledge limited recurrences of cholera, among other epidemic diseases. Indeed, the 1856 epidemic ended largely because of the intervention of John Snow, who famously identified the contaminated water at the public pump in St. James' Parish as the source of the epidemic, prefiguring the germ theory of disease and the development of a modern medical science.
This intervention prefigured the development of the British state, in broader matters of public affairs as in the specific field of public health, as an essentially regulatory entity concerned with ensuring the proper functioning of the bodies of its subjects. As explored by Foucault, western European governments in the early modern era were concerned with prohibiting improper behaviour on the parts of their subjects, whether sexual, religious, or political. It was only in the 19th century, however, that the growth of modern medical science allowed the regulation of disease.
This regulation was manifested not only in terms of action against disease-causing elements--whether infestations of bacteria or virii or inadequate civic sanitation--but against behaviours, particularly those characteristic among working-class communities and the poor, which were viewed as causative or aggravating factors in illness. The regulation and limitation of disease was a primary function of the 19th century state; the ability to act in this area was widely seen as a necessary precondition for modernization, as the roughly contemporary case of the autonomous khedivate of Egypt demonstrates.
***
Cool link: The on-line edition of On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, by John Snow, M.D., available at
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/snowbook2.html
