BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

“Western,” medicine. “Modern medicine” is a more neutral term that accurately portrays the
scientific nature of the field and does not allude to an inherent Westernness.
All over the world, a crucial part of the modern medicine movement was the legitimation
of, and in many cases the hegemony of, scientific medicine, which spread to encompass nearly
all aspects of human life. This included the transformation of hospitals from dens of disease and
illness, where indigent people went to die, to sanitary houses of healing, the place of choice for
the most modern treatments. Beginning in the early twentieth century, medical specialization
also emerged as fields of medicine became too complex for one person to master. Thus the
medical fields of ophthalmology, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, and so on, were developed.
As scientific medical theories became widely accepted and hospitals underwent
transformations, first in Europe and the United States and later elsewhere, the field of public
health emerged to incorporate modern medical ideas and spread them to the masses. The focus
of much of these efforts was on cleanliness. Measures to improve public health date back
centuries, for example, the creation of Roman aqueducts, religious dietary proscriptions, and the
burning of cities during the Black Death. However, public health gained greater importance in
the mid-1800s with John Snow’s discovery that a London cholera outbreak was caused by a
contaminated public well. This discovery, combined with germ theory, spurred greater interest
in improving public health, especially in the areas of sanitation and water supply, in order to curb
the spread of infectious disease. Fears of disease caused by dank, dark spaces mobilized
Americans to clean up their homes, use disinfectants, boil drinking water, and improve
ventilation to relieve the buildup of “sewer gases.” 15 Governments created public health
departments to further the local cause, such as the American Sheppard-Towner Act to establish
15 Nancy Tomes, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1999).
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