Scuola, igiene e nation building: maestri e medici nell’Italia liberale

Abstract

This work is focused on the relationship between the process of Nation-Building and bourgeois civilization after the Italian unification and the teaching of hygienic knowledge in the schools. The school was central in this relationship, as it was considered the best place to pursue a gradual sanitary literacy of Italian citizenship thanks to the educational partnership between teachers and doctors. The most important source in this work is the hygienic literature written by the doctors for the Italian teachers. These sources were drawn from the Library of the Italian Ministry of Education, which has an important book heritage to explore.

Keywords

• school
• hygiene
• nation-building
• teachers
• doctors