David S. Barnes, Ph.D.
The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Reception 5:30 p.m., Lecture 6:00 p.m.
New York Academy of Medicine-1216 Fifth Ave., New York

The advent of the age of germ theory played a complex role in shaping Parisian's response to the "Great Stinks" that frequently arose from their city's sewers in hot summer months. This talk, drawn from David Barnes's new book from Johns Hopkins University Press, traces those responses over time to explore French society's adaptation to a microbe-centered science of public health during the 1880s and 1890s, when the germ theory of disease burst into public consciousness.

David S. Barnes is Director of the Health & Societies Program in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of History and Sociology of Science. Professor Barnes studied urban history and French history at Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley. His first book, The Making of a Social Disease: Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century France (University of California Press, 1995), explores the social transformations and anxieties which colored and constrained responses to the industrializing world's leading killer. His ongoing research projects include the politics of international disease control programs in the twentieth century; the Lazaretto quarantine station (1799-1893) on the Delaware River just outside Philadelphia; and the history of disgust.

Save the Dates!
Wednesday, November 8, 2006
John P. Swann, "100 Years and More of Misbranding, Adulteration, and Drug Regulation in America"

Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Barron H. Lerner, "When Illness Goes Public: Celebrity Patients and How We Look at Medicine"

Thursday, January 25, 2007
The Lilianna Sauter Lecture
Harriet Washington, "American Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans"

Thursday, February 15, 2007
Chris Feudtner, "Depicting Decisions: The History of Diabetes and the Daily Work of Care"

Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture
Walton Schalick, "School Books, School Days: The Technology of Medical Books in Medieval Paris"

Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Susan Lederer, "Bombs, Blood, and Bio-Markers: Medical Preparedness in Cold-War America."

Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Gerry Oppenheimer, "Shattered Dreams?" The Impact of AIDS on the New South Africa"

ALL LECTURES AT 6 PM, RECEPTIONS AT 5:30 PM

This event is free and open to the public. For more information about NYAM programs in the history of medicine, visit our website at http://www.nyam.org/initiatives/im-histe.shtml, write history@nyam.org , or call Christian Warren at 212.822.7314.

The Academy's Rare Book Room was featured in the New York Times. To read a press release, with a link to the article, visit http://www.nyam.org/news/2258.html .

Historical programs at NYAM are supported by the Friends of the Rare Book Room. Please join the Friends now. Write cwarren@nyam.org for details, or download a membership form at http://www.nyam.org/initiatives/docs/FRBR_Renewal.pdf .

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