Preliminary Programme

In Western Europe in the 1950s tuberculosis had lost its place as health threat number one against children’s life and well-being. For almost half a century, tuberculosis had been at the core of health policies towards school children – and with this threat eliminated, one might think that the time had come for safely leaving children’s health to their parents.

According to several prominent physicians in the Nordic countries the answer was a definite and absolute no: the ordinary parent had no idea of the harm that could be done to children’s mental health if they were not treated right. It was also to be feared that the Second World War had had a particularly damaging effect upon children’s minds. Thus, prevention and treatment of mental illnesses had to be given a prominent place in post-war society. It was in fact argued that mental illness was “the new tuberculosis” and that “the tasks within this field today are as immense as they were earlier with regard to contagious diseases” (Dr. M. Tottie, Sweden). It was further argued that the fight against tuberculosis had provided a model also for preventing mental illness, thus, an apparatus to control children’s mental health – similar to the one set up to control tuberculosis – should be established (Dr. A. Diesen, Norway). A number of criteria were worked out to identify mental illness at an early stage, not unlike the way “weak” and “pre-tuberculous” children had been identified in the early 20th century.

This paper will discuss the extent to which the society at large – but in particular teachers and politicians – accepted the definition of mental illness as “the new tuberculosis”, and what links, if any, there were between previous policies to curb tuberculosis and efforts in post-war society to prevent and control mental illness. Finally, the paper will discuss how the disappearance of tuberculosis as a main threat and the new initiatives regarding mental health influenced the broader definitions of hygienic childhoods and healthy children. The Norwegian case will be focussed, but comparative glances will be cast at the other Nordic countries. (Show less)

Despite overwhelming evidence of a high morbidity and an enormous impact of illness on school-aged children’s lives, this age group hardly figures in studies into the history of health and welfare. The existing histories of preventive medicine for children focus largely on infant and maternal welfare and the accomplishments of campaigns to reduce infant deaths. Studies into child protection, education and child employment tend to ignore hygiene and to be concerned primarily with the rise of social policy and the development of the welfare state. If children’s health is considered by historians it is mostly from the perspective of the origins of institutions that added to the development of a network responsible for the progressive medicalization of childhood during the twentieth century, like the school medical service and child guidance clinics.
This paper approaches hygiene for school children in the Netherlands from a different angle, namely the disease that continued to be the most serious child and adolescent killer throughout the first half of the ‘century of the child’: tuberculosis. As in other European countries, about 1900 the fear of contamination at school with open lung tuberculosis was a major reason to introduce school medical inspection. Open air schools were established for children with lung diseases or recovering from ill health. Since the 1920s separate sanatoria for young patients opened up. For children who were not ill but, because of a weak condition, at risk of becoming a victim of tuberculosis philanthropists set up summer camps. In France and Belgium schools organized these camps in cooperation with the receiving local communities, the so-called colonies scolaires, whereas in Britain school and welfare authorities preferred family nursing in the countryside and Denmark chose a mix of these two approaches.
In this paper I consider the Dutch hygienic approach to ‘weak’ children, which stood out for its large scale, four-season approach and loss of contact with schooling. At first in the Netherlands teachers set up vacation camps near the sea and in the woods. However, these informal summer events quickly changed into massive institutions, run by professionals and operating on a year-round basis. Although these ‘health colonies’ continued to be organized by private societies, soon the medical profession gained the power to decide upon admission and supervise treatment, the goals and terms of which were redefined in purely medical terms. I trace the history of the diagnosis and treatment of ‘weak’ or ‘pretuberculous’ children and analyse the impact of the ubiquitous fear of tuberculosis, which continued to weigh heavily upon childhood until after World War Two, when the standard of living rapidly improved and tuberculosis became almost a ‘museum illness’. It was only after this fear was seriously reduced that the Dutch ‘health colonies’ became part of a network of mental health provisions for children. (Show less)

School medical inspection, school cantines, summer colonies and sea side sanatoria for pre-tuberculous and tuberculous children played an important role in the frame of a wide range of activities focused on the protection of children in Spain during the first decades of the 20th century. The high rates of infectious diseases and children mortality, and the particular threaten of tuberculosis made local authorities and civil associations to develop a hygienic strategy to improve the children’s physical conditions. The colonies for poor children were officially established by a Royal Decree in 1892. The Act for the protection of the children (1904) and the First Spanish Conference on School Hygiene (Barcelona, 1912) set up a League for School Hygiene, point of departure of the creation of a School State Medical Board (1933).
The aim was to help those children needed of the benefits derived from balanced feeding, environment and the way of life near the sea or on the mountains. In the case of the colonies and summer sanatories, during at least a two weeks period, the children received a special feeding to help them to reach a better development, took part in excursions, practised gymnastic exercises, collective games and sports, enjoyed the open air and sun baths
The present paper will consider the social agents involved: State and local public administration, physicians, Roman Catholic Church, private philanthropic associations, and their social and medical ideology. (Show less)

In October 1938 a new children’s sanatorium was inaugurated at the coast of Vintersbølle, about 2 hours drive by train from Copenhagen. Two years earlier the National Society for the Fighting of Tuberculosis had got involved in the out-placing of infants, born of TB-infected mothers. The hospital was designed with these children as well as older children in mind.

The hospital had room for 100 children at the age of 0-14. The far majority of the small patients came from poor working class families in the Copenhagen area.

The hospital was designed by two famous Danish architects C.F. Møller and Kay Fisker, with an important Danish painter William Scharff as decorator. The two architects had already been involved in the construction of a hospital in the provincial town of Aarhus as well as a “radiumstation” in Copenhagen. It was not new to them to build for science and medicine, but it was new to them to build for children. In contrast the painter was not unfamiliar with painting children and for this occasion he made two big mural painting of naked children playing in the countryside.

The paper asks the question to what degree building for children’s health differs from building for adults? Does it have its own scale, related to a specific view of children and their health? The paper will discuss the architectural and art history of the institution and relate it to the history of fighting tuberculosis in Denmark as well as to a broader social and cultural history of children’s health.

The paper draws on a wide range of material, from architectural drawings, memoirs, reports, articles and a big collection of photos. (Show less)