Visualisierung in der Säuglingsfürsorge Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts (Volume 2) (English shop)

Der ‚Atlas der Hygiene des Säuglings und Kleinkindes‘

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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, public health care was subsumed under the terms ‘Hygienische Volksbildung’ (hygienic public education) or ‘Hygienische Volksbelehrung’ (hygienic public instruction). Alongside topics such as contagious diseases or ethical and moral questions, infant care occupied a prominent place within hygienic health instruction. Its orientation was directed in particular towards preventive health measures and made feeding practices for infants – breastfeeding – its centrepiece. Visual representations proved to be the most important strategy for establishing and stabilising scientific findings and hygienic knowledge. The ‘Atlas der Hygiene des Säuglings und des Kleinkindes’, published in three editions between 1918 and 1926, is an important example with regard to contemporary popularisation strategies and visualisation efforts. On this basis, the study examines the pictorial rhetoric by means of which knowledge was aesthetically constructed and conveyed, the role played in this by the relationship between science and society, and the background against which contemporary viewing habits and traditions of representation developed.