Children of Orenburg in the conditions of the diphtheria epidemic at the end of the 19th century
Elena V. Burlutskaya, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor
Orenburg State Pedagogical University, Orenburg, Russia, ida777@yandex.ru, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0001-2207
Abstract
The article is focused on the analysis of the situation with children in Orenburg in the conditions of the diphtheria epidemic of 1895—1897. The author, on the basis of sources of various origins, finds out how parents and doctors reacted to the spread of this dangerous disease, what measures were taken by the city authorities to combat the epidemic. The main goal of the study is to analyze children’s everyday life in the conditions of the diphtheria epidemic in Orenburg in the late 1890s and to determine how valuable children’s lives were in a governorate center at the end of the 19th century. The study is based on various groups of sources, including archival materials, regional press, historical and statistical descriptions, and medical reference books of the early 20th century. As a result, a conclusion was made about the unfavorable sanitary and hygienic conditions that prevailed in Orenburg during this period, the extremely low degree of awareness of parents of almost all categories of the Orenburg society about ways to preserve children’s health, their ignorance in relation to childhood diseases. The city authorities reacted to unfavorable epidemic conditions situationally, there was no permanent and effective health care system for children in the city. The fight against the diphtheria epidemic, in effect, fell on the shoulders of individual doctors acting as educators, who were aware of the catastrophic scale of child morbidity and mortality in the city and Governorate and took real actions to reduce them.
Acknowledgments: The work was carried out within the framework of the Russian Science Foundation grant for the implementation of the scientific project No. 22-28-00763 “Children and childhood. Everyday life of a child in the conditions of a provincial urban society (on the materials of Orenburg of the post-reform era)”
For citation:
Elena V. Burlutskaya Children of Orenburg in the conditions of the diphtheria epidemic at the end of the 19th century. Vestnik of Orenburg State Pedagogical University. Electronic Scientific Journal, 2023, no. 3 (47), pp. 128—142. DOI: https://doi.org/10.32516/2303-9922.2023.47.8.
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