Contagion, Isolation, And Biopolitics In Victorian London
by Matthew Newsom Kerr /
2017 / English / EPUB
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This book is a history of London’s vast network of fever and
smallpox hospitals, built by the Metropolitan Asylums Board between
1870 and 1900. Unprecedented in size and scope, this public
infrastructure inaugurated a new technology of disease
prevention―isolation. Londoners suffering from infectious diseases
submitted themselves to far-reaching forms of surveillance,
removal, and detention, which made them legible to science and the
state in entirely new ways. Isolation on a mass scale transformed
the meaning of urban epidemics and introduced contentious new
relationships between health, citizenship, and the spaces of modern
governance. Rich in archival sources and images, this engaging book
offers innovative analysis at the intersection of preventive
medicine and Victorian-era liberalism.
This book is a history of London’s vast network of fever and
smallpox hospitals, built by the Metropolitan Asylums Board between
1870 and 1900. Unprecedented in size and scope, this public
infrastructure inaugurated a new technology of disease
prevention―isolation. Londoners suffering from infectious diseases
submitted themselves to far-reaching forms of surveillance,
removal, and detention, which made them legible to science and the
state in entirely new ways. Isolation on a mass scale transformed
the meaning of urban epidemics and introduced contentious new
relationships between health, citizenship, and the spaces of modern
governance. Rich in archival sources and images, this engaging book
offers innovative analysis at the intersection of preventive
medicine and Victorian-era liberalism.