ABSTRACT
In 1909, Woods Hutchinson, a British-born and American-educated doctor, published a book called Health and Common Sense. The book’s opening words strike a note quite at odds with the dominant tone of the medical advice of the domestic sanitarians and the fringe practitioners of the late nineteenth century. The fragile and vulnerable human subject beleaguered in a hostile and pernicious environment is superseded by a tough, adaptive creature with a talent for survival. Hutchinson still endorses the key tenets of the domestic sanitarians’ credo. Fresh air and sunlight are the main guarantors of a healthy domestic environment; the bedroom should be well ventilated, with all the windows open ‘from the top at least one, and better two to three feet, so that a gentle current of air can be felt blowing across the face’.
