Les médecins hygiénistes du xixe siècle et l’alimentation du paysan roumain

Abstract

Public health nutrition concerns fall within the general topic of the Social Hygiene Movement of the late 19th andearly 20th centuries. The public health nutrition discourse focuses on several priority topics: an almost all plant-based diet, lack of culinary know-how, the consumption of rotten corn as the cause of pellagra. Beyond various issues potentially resolvable by means of a better education, public nutrition hygiene poses the question of the actual economic capacity of the peasant household. When dealing with the subject of public health nutrition, the Romanian hygiene doctors will always take into consideration its ideological connotations, calling to mind the need to both boost population growth and ensure public good health, which is inextricably linked to the country’s economic and military resources. The differences which exist between the advocates of the Social Hygiene Movement are determined by their acceptance (or not) of the state’s responsibility for the peasantry as the largest part of its citizens, and all the more so as their access to staple foods may eventually facilitate access to land ownership.

Keywords

• public health nutrition
• public health medicine
• the Social Hygiene Movement
• alcoholism
• pellagra