Joseph Melling

The politics of madness : the state, insanity and society in England, 1845-1914

1 Introduction: The English Asylum and its Historians 2 The Origins of the Asylum 3 The Asylum and the British State in the administration of pauper lunacy, 1845-1914 4 The Ethos of Treatment, Care and Management at the Asylum, 1845-1914 5 Journey to the Asylum: Residence, distance and migration in admissions to the Asylum, 1845-1914 6 Community, Friends and Family: Asylum, Lunatics and the social environment, 1845-1914 7 Reading the Rules of Domesticity: Gender, insanity and the asylum, 1845-1914 8 Madness and the Market: Occupations, class and the asylum, 1845-1914 9 The Patient Experience of the Pauper and Private Asylum 10 From Asylum Inmate to Outpatient: The remaking of the institutional landscape in the Twentieth Century, 1914-1990

“A Mere Matter of Rock”: Organized Labour, Scientific Evidence and British Government Schemes for Compensation of Silicosis and Pneumoconiosis among Coalminers, 1926–1940

The growth of statutory compensation for industrial injuries and illness has attracted considerable attention from historians of state welfare and students of organized labour in both Europe and North America. The rights of legal redress for disease and accidents in the workplace have become the subject of some debate among historians of occupational health and safety, most particularly in regard to asbestos-related illnesses. Among the most detailed and scholarly accounts of the subject in Britain are those by Peter Bartrip and his collaborators. In contrast to many accounts in labour and medical history which express strong empathy with the plight of workers who faced injury and death in the workplace, Bartrip adopts a model of industrial behaviour which is closer to rational-choice assumptions of mainstream economics. His recent account of government regulation of occupational diseases since the nineteenth century offers limited comment on the attitudes of trade unionists to accidents, though he broadly maintains that British unions have historically been more concerned with winning compensation awards than pressing for the prevention of hazards in the industrial workplace.

Book Review: How everyday products make people sick: toxins at home and in the workplace

The publication of Rachel Carsons Silent spring in 1962 serves as an important landmark in the history of medicine. Medical researchers and policy-makers once again registered the impact of environmental conditions in the health of populations familiar to Victorian doctors, while the manufacture and use of chemical products (and the pollution caused by petro-chemicals in particular) became associated with imbalances in nature and ecological degradation. The practice of occupational and environmental medicine moved from the margins of professional concerns to the centre of debates on the protection of consumers as well as producers. Air quality, urban atmospheres and domestic or garden products were subjected to fresh scrutiny as environmental health campaigns targeted DDT, lead paint and a host of other substances widely marketed as safe for suburban family use. Policy innovations of the 1970s and 1980s included the creation of new national health and safety agencies in Britain, the United States and other affluent societies. Medical historians have followed this shift in focus from professionalized personal medicine and institutional provision to take more seriously the potent significance of toxins found at work and in the home. Chris Sellers, Joel Tarr, David Rosner, Gerald Markowitz, Paul Blanc and others have made notable contributions, mostly concerned with environmental hazards in twentieth-century America. This new research has also encompassed occupational threats from products such as asbestos, silica and coal, provoking heated debates as well as the participation of historians in public legal proceedings as workers and consumers have sought damages from major corporations across the globe. It is in this context that Paul Blancs new book can be welcomed both as a significant exercise in medical history and as a useful attempt to popularize the subject of health risks which have been, and are, associated with the production, use and consumption of familiar and unfamiliar substances. As a medical scientist with direct experience of occupational and environmental hazards, Blanc presents a vivid and fluent narrative history of individual chemicals and industrial processes, including the introduction of man-made fibres such as rayon which involved the lethal use of carbon disulfide. We are reminded that the widespread introduction of poisonous substances to processes of production and consumption has been inextricably linked to the growth of consumer capitalism and the large trans-national corporation. Blancs general argument is that many of the most dangerous minerals and compounds utilized in the making of household goods have long been known to be seriously dangerous to human and animal health. Bernardino Ramazzini graphically described many of them at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Blanc outlines the characteristic responses of the opponents of regulation. Advocates of economic liberalism emphasize the capacity of markets, producers and consumers to assess risks and protect their own interest by demanding higher wages or another premium. Faced with indisputable evidence of poisoning, critics have historically questioned the scientific veracity of research and stressed the economic and political costs of following visionary (anti-business) crusaders. Some “revisionist” health historians as well as economists have argued that the most effective solutions to the risks of human and environmental damage have been historically found by scientists, business leaders and policy-makers seeking practical technologies, contrasting these approaches with the politically-inspired critics of economic progress. Blancs vivid and meticulous documentation of deaths and illness arising from a wide range of “durables” provides irrefutable evidence that irresponsible practices have been perpetrated in weakly-regulated industries within advanced industrial societies as well as less-protected developing countries where workers and consumers have historically absorbed the risks of production undertaken by global corporations mainly based in the United States, Europe and Japan. It is worth noting that some of the most primitive working conditions and the least healthy products were (and are) found in communist societies pursuing a productionist goal of maximum economic and military growth alongside a drive to improve basic living standards and state health services. The paradoxes of consumer choice and collective responsibility for a sustainable environment can in part be explained by delinquent capitalism but we also need to embrace the lessons of global deterioration. Otherwise the historical fears of a silent spring and a nuclear winter will be superseded by the prospect of profound global damage.