HLTHAGE 3D03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: School Hygiene, Ableism, Public Health

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Health, Aging and Society
• Course: HLTHAGE 3D03
• Professor: Mat Savelli

Document Summary

What we conceive of as modern society started to unfold in this period. Notion of measurement, improvability and perfectibility - people started to look away from the spiritual and towards the quantification of all things - attempting to improve all things. Creation of the concept of normality - we might think about normality as a bell curve, anything that deviates from that average is deemed abnormal. Liberalism - the government getting smaller and prioritizing individuals - instead of society as one unit - individual rights, religious freedom, etc. Capitalism, competition - the notion that businesses are freestanding units who are all competing against one another - identifying the best worker for a job becomes very important. Public health measures dramatically reduced the impact of infectious diseases in the west. Medicine became preoccupied with chronic conditions: arthritis, neuroses, diseases of old age, mothers with anemia, mental retardation, etc.