CIVILITY, HYGIENE AND HYGIENISM

Abstract

The XIXth century, specially in its second half, was the century of hygiene and hygienic sensibility; a sensibility shown, in the school institution, in Hygiene and Domestic economy textbooks that were published after the introduction of this subject in the schools for girls, in 1857, and of the textbooks on Civility. After pointing out the space and content of Civility in the context of school matters, this work tries to clarify the hygienist perspective developped in its textbooks, as well as the articulation of this topic of hygiene in the model proposed by them of (well) educated man and woman. Code of (good) Christian behaviours, the textbooks of Civility aspired to define a set of external rules based on the notions of order, decorum, and respect. In this way the hygienic values, inserted in a wider context, although they were usually included in a specific chapter -generally titled "On cleanliness and tidiness" were also present in many other chapters of these textbooks. The insistence observed in them on the "hygienization" of the boys' and girls' life, submitting it to economic and social criteria of rationality, transforms the hygiene into one more tool of control within Civility.