Perspectives on the Interaction of Medicine and Rural Cultures: Spain, Norway and European Russia, 1860–1910

Abstract

'We will now deal with the present state of rural hygiene, which is indeed a pitiful and disgusting story, dreadful to tell.'1 Words similar to those spoken by Florence Nightingale echoed throughout Europe towards the end of the nineteenth century. They served not merely as a description of rural hygiene, but also signalled a change in perceptions of the urban versus the rural. Urban spaces were regarded unhealthy and even a threat to national well-being in the lniddle of the nineteenth century but the countryside increasingly attracted attention as a defective environment. Physicians, philanthropists, travellers and politicians alike provided evidence on the poor state of hygiene in rural areas compared with urban ones. Mortality figures seelned to deliver the final proof: nineteenth century European countries tended to have lower rural than urban death rates but this was reversed during the first half of the twentieth century. Concern over such changes became international in scope, as illustrated by the League of Nations ' investigation of living conditions and health standards in rural Europe during the 1920s and by its sponsorship of the international rural health conferences in Geneva and Budapest in 1931.