How Americans became aware of the existence of germs and how this
awareness impacted their everyday lives is told in this
illuminating medical/social history. Tomes (History/SUNY, Stony
Brook) looks at how the germ theory, first articulated around 1870
meshed with prior theories about the spread of disease. Proponents
of the new "gospel of germs" were able to build on the traditional
methods of preventing disease advocated by earlier sanitarians:
disinfection, water purification, plumbing, and ventilation. Around
the turn of the century, attention shifted from sewer gas,
contaminated water, and household dirt to other means by which
germs are spread, such as coughing, sneezing, and sharing drinking
cups. Tomes reveals how the antituberculosis crusade and the
domestic-science movement educated Americans about dealing with
these hazards; and by using trade journals, advertisements, and
patent applications the author shows how entrepreneurs exploited
the fear of germs to promote a host of new goods and services.
Shorter skirts for women, vacuum cleaners, window screens,
white-tiled bathrooms, refrigerators, paper cups, cellophane
packaging - all trace their origins to the desire to create a
disease-free environment. The author also illustrates how disease
awareness can be a two-edged sword, stirring fear of those groups -
immigrants, minorities - suspected of carrying disease and at the
same time providing the impetus for improving their living and
working conditions. The advent of antibiotics, however, gave rise
to a generation confident of having won the war against infectious
disease. As Tomes points out, that confidence is waning with
threats such as HIV and other viruses, the re-emergence of killer
tuberculosis, and the growing resistance of common microorganisms
to once-powerful antibiotics; thus the study of the gospel of germs
seems especially relevant today. Full of fascinating details of
daily life, although there's probably more about bathroom plumbing
and toilets than most people ever wanted to know. (Kirkus Reviews)
AIDS. Ebola. "Killer microbes." All around us the alarms are going
off, warning of the danger of new, deadly diseases. And yet, as
Nancy Tomes reminds us in her absorbing book, this is really
nothing new. A remarkable work of medical and cultural history, The
Gospel of Germs takes us back to the first great "germ panic" in
American history, which peaked in the early 1900s, to explore the
origins of our modern disease consciousness. Little more than a
hundred years ago, ordinary Americans had no idea that many deadly
ailments were the work of microorganisms, let alone that their own
behavior spread such diseases. The Gospel of Germs shows how the
revolutionary findings of late nineteenth-century bacteriology made
their way from the laboratory to the lavatory and kitchen, with
public health reformers spreading the word and women taking up the
battle on the domestic front. Drawing on a wealth of advice books,
patent applications, advertisements, and oral histories, Tomes
traces the new awareness of the microbe as it radiated outward from
middle-class homes into the world of American business and crossed
the lines of class, gender, ethnicity, and race. Just as we take
some of the weapons in this germ war for granted--fixtures as
familiar as the white porcelain toilet, the window screen, the
refrigerator, and the vacuum cleaner--so we rarely think of the
drastic measures deployed against disease in the dangerous old days
before antibiotics. But, as Tomes notes, many of the hygiene rules
first popularized in those days remain the foundation of infectious
disease control today. Her work offers a timely look into the
history of our long-standing obsession with germs, its impact on
twentieth-century culture and society, and its troubling new
relevance to our own lives.
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