La problematique sociale et economique de la paysannerie dans les periodiques medicaux roumains.
The Social and Economic Problematic of the Peasantry in the Romanian Medical Periodicals.

“The Sanitary and Hygiene Handbook”. Bucharest 1899-1907

Summary/Abstract: The Sanitary and Hygiene Handbook (Bucharest, 1899-1907), a periodical viewed as “important for the rural sanitary service” (Gh. Crăiniceanu, 1907), is considered defining for the Romanian hygienic movement which puts a distinct emphasis on the rural world. The doctors that publish their articles in The Sanitary and Hygiene Handbook believe that responsibility for the disastrous state of the rural population belongs primarily to the state, and its improvement can be achieved not only through social pedagogy, but also by adopting social as well as political reforms. The “peasant issue” to be found in the pages of the magazine can be largely grouped in five thematic axes: the lack of hygienic preoccupations and hygienic awareness of the rural population, the relation between hygiene-education-instruction, between hygiene and poverty, the alimentation of the peasants and the effects of their precarious diet (misery/physiological hunger and pellagra), the social problem itself (the relation labour-property in the rural setting). The inherent relation between the lack of hygiene and poverty is present in the magazine from its very first issues and during the last years of its publication the necessity of changing the property law becomes clearer.

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