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The Contagious City: The Politics of Public Health in Early Philadelphia
By the time William Penn was planning the colony that would come to be called Pennsylvania, with Philadelphia at its heart, Europeans on both sides of the ocean had long experience with the hazards of city life, disease the most terrifying among them. Drawing from those experiences, colonists hoped to create new urban forms that combined the commercial advantages of a seaport with the health benefits of the country. The Contagious City details how early Americans struggled to preserve their collective health against both the strange new perils of the colonial environment and the familiar dangers of the traditional city, through a period of profound transformation in both politics and medicine.
Philadelphia was the paramount example of this reforming tendency. Tracing the city’s history from its founding on the banks of the Delaware River in 1682 to the yellow fever outbreak of 1793, Simon Finger emphasizes the importance of public health and population control in decisions made by the city’s planners and leaders. He also shows that key figures in the city’s history, including Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, brought their keen interest in science and medicine into the political sphere. Throughout his account, Finger makes clear that medicine and politics were inextricably linked, and that both undergirded the debates over such crucial concerns as the city’s location, its urban plan, its immigration policy, and its creation of institutions of public safety. In framing the history of Philadelphia through the imperatives of public health, The Contagious City offers a bold new vision of the urban history of colonial America.
Philadelphia was the paramount example of this reforming tendency. Tracing the city’s history from its founding on the banks of the Delaware River in 1682 to the yellow fever outbreak of 1793, Simon Finger emphasizes the importance of public health and population control in decisions made by the city’s planners and leaders. He also shows that key figures in the city’s history, including Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, brought their keen interest in science and medicine into the political sphere. Throughout his account, Finger makes clear that medicine and politics were inextricably linked, and that both undergirded the debates over such crucial concerns as the city’s location, its urban plan, its immigration policy, and its creation of institutions of public safety. In framing the history of Philadelphia through the imperatives of public health, The Contagious City offers a bold new vision of the urban history of colonial America.
246 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 15, 2012
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December 22, 2022
In 1666 the Great Fire of London killed the various diseases that had plagued London, including cholera, the bubonic plague, the Black Death. The English emigrants to North America and later their North American descendents concerned themselves with founding, building, maintaining healthy cities and citizens.
Having received a charter from Charles II, William Penn founded the Colony of Pennsylvania In 1681. From the begininning Penn and other colony leaders concerned themselves with founding a city site that promoted health and then built up the city based on conflicting theories.
This book The Contagious City explains the various theories of what constitutes a healthy city and citizenry, what obligations city, citizens and later states and federal government have to promote health. Whatever theories groups of people believed to be true, Philadelphia's leadership tended to agree that the whole purpose of maintaining or returning working folk back to their work that contributed to the welfare of the city.
Being the largest city among the thirteen colonies, being the capital of the emergent federal government, and being home to local and Revolutionary War hospitals, soldiers and camp followers who often had been country folk, now often were having their first experience of what what was required to promote/to return to health in more concentrated populations. This new awareness would come to inform the Federal military hospital experiences of soldiers, their families, medical providers and hospital staff.
As a 21st-century American woman, I wonder why this awareness of the importance of maintaining public health is no longer considered important.
Worth my rereading.
Having received a charter from Charles II, William Penn founded the Colony of Pennsylvania In 1681. From the begininning Penn and other colony leaders concerned themselves with founding a city site that promoted health and then built up the city based on conflicting theories.
This book The Contagious City explains the various theories of what constitutes a healthy city and citizenry, what obligations city, citizens and later states and federal government have to promote health. Whatever theories groups of people believed to be true, Philadelphia's leadership tended to agree that the whole purpose of maintaining or returning working folk back to their work that contributed to the welfare of the city.
Being the largest city among the thirteen colonies, being the capital of the emergent federal government, and being home to local and Revolutionary War hospitals, soldiers and camp followers who often had been country folk, now often were having their first experience of what what was required to promote/to return to health in more concentrated populations. This new awareness would come to inform the Federal military hospital experiences of soldiers, their families, medical providers and hospital staff.
As a 21st-century American woman, I wonder why this awareness of the importance of maintaining public health is no longer considered important.
Worth my rereading.
Displaying 1 of 1 review