engleski

Impact of modernisation of public health and woman's education on infant mortality in the late 19th and early 20th century Dubrovnik

In this paper we discuss the possible impact of wet nursing customs as well as the modernisation of public health on infant mortality in Dubrovnik. By becoming part of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1815, Austrian administration introduced a system of cameralistic public health with the goal to increase population. The medical police, consisting of municipal doctors and surgeons, sanitary officials and midwives, was responsible for taking broad public health measures that included control over folk customs concerning childbirth and childcare. However, the duties of the medical police, as well as the activities of the medical and social institutions, were not considerably advanced or changed in comparison to the Dubrovnik republican period, when there was well planned public health care for all citizens. The most significant change in the public health system, introduced by the Austrian administration, was the midwives training and licencing obligation. Midwives were engaged in municipal service to be available to all women and also in lying-in hospital for the unwed mothers. Their duties included visits and counselling young mothers during the first days after childbirth. As the number of trained midwives in Dubrovnik increased by the end of the 19th century, we will explore their impact on infants' health and nursing customs. We argue that this contact of trained midwives with mostly uneducated women was significant for the mothers' and infants' health. Doctors and health reformers, authors of popular literature for mothers argued that mothers should breastfeed their own infants. Social customs show a different picture as hiring a wet nurse was a common practice for the upper classes of Dubrovnik society at least by the middle of the 19th century. Therefore, we discuss how modern public health and doctor's campaigns impacted on such custom. By comparing changes in infant mortality in two periods we will search the link between trends in public health and infant mortality. In first period, from 1870 to 1879, the majority of mentioned changes did not start to occur yet as opposed to second period from 1900 to 1909.

infant mortality; public health; Dubrovnik; 19th century; 20th century; midwives; popular literature;

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