Ud af røret? - Dansk Center for Byhistorie

The study shows that physicians, engineers, chemists, biologists etc.,
through their educational training and positions, produces discourse and
have the opportunity to practice trough what Foucault has called a battle
‘for truth’. It is precisely the search for rational, unequivocal ‘truths’ and ‘evidence’
that gave the physicians and engineers, like others amongst them,
the convincing arguments they could use, politically, in the City Council,
where ‘Miasma’, ‘Bacteria’ and mortality statistics entered the discussions.
The study shows in addition, that the discussions in the City Council and
pertinent committees themselves, played, at the same time, their part in setting
the agenda for the discussions at the scientific congresses and meetings,
the issues taken up by the professional journals, and what sort of scientific
studies were in fact initiated. Thus, the relations were mutually influencing.
The study demonstrates that the existence of scientific reports in the process
of the debates is not sufficient in guaranteeing that these findings would
be heeded. Even though chemical studies and statistical data had been
presented in the debates of the 1850’s, competing arguments from other
disciplines, the standpoint of freedom, propriety rights and economics were
linked to a simultaneous realization of liberal political ideas with a free constitution
etc. A great number of sceptics argued that the sewerage system
was a violation of newly won freedom, that homeowners no longer were
apple to sell night soil etc. The empirical material and the analysis show,
however, that statistical data, drawn up in numerical figures and tables, and
the subsequent possibility of making comparisons between other cities and
countries, was of significance, just as the intensified bacteriological, chemical,
biological and microscopic studies were.
Minutes of the sanitary and technical congresses of the 1800’s and the
workshops of the 1990’s have been a rich source of empirical material, as
they present not only the most salient scientific, technical as well as political
agendas of the time, but also underscore how progress and new lines of
thought constitute, in part, the very aim of such gatherings. Here, standpoints
which characterize more ‘conservative’ positions were not granted
acceptance, and discussions, dialogue and negotiations instead were intended
to lead to ‘Agreement’ on new aims, and on means as to the
achievement of these aims. Congresses, meetings and workshops were
brought to their close with balloting on new, joint ‘Recommendations’,
‘Resolutions’, and ‘Visions’ of the future. Whereas in the 1800’s the debates
on the sewage and wastewater constituted, especially, a part of the city’s
and the physicians’ health and sanitary preventions, it was in the 1970’s
and 80’s biologists and chemists who would enter the scene. The urban
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