My last job at Columbia, up to this past summer, was curating the School of Public Health’s centennial, leaning into Covid for fundraising and newsiness. Even after a decade tangentially covering any number of public health professors, I’d still been awfully vague on what the field actually entailed—it was all so slippery and amorphous that I had to dig back centuries to start making sense of things.
The burning all-consuming ascetics have always been in the public health field. Ibsen dramatized them in 1900, in 'An Enemy of Society'. Clean water and good sanitation were NOT ENOUGH for the fanatics.....
DR STOCKMANN. But they'll get the worst of it, I can promise them. Henceforth, every day I'll throw myself into the breach in the Messenger; bombard them with one article after another.
ASLAKSEN. Yes, but look here...
BILLING. Hurrah! There'll be war, there'll be war!
DR STOCKMANN. I will smite them to the earth. I will crush them, level all their entrenchments to the ground before the eyes of all right-thinking men. I'll do it.
ASLAKSEN. But all the same be reasonable, doctor; proceed with moderation...
BILLING. Not at all, not at all; don't spare for dynamite.
DR STOCKMANN (going on imperturbably) For, remember that henceforth it is not merely a question of water works and sewers.
No, the whole of society must be cleansed, disinfected.
The burning all-consuming ascetics have always been in the public health field. Ibsen dramatized them in 1900, in 'An Enemy of Society'. Clean water and good sanitation were NOT ENOUGH for the fanatics.....
DR STOCKMANN. But they'll get the worst of it, I can promise them. Henceforth, every day I'll throw myself into the breach in the Messenger; bombard them with one article after another.
ASLAKSEN. Yes, but look here...
BILLING. Hurrah! There'll be war, there'll be war!
DR STOCKMANN. I will smite them to the earth. I will crush them, level all their entrenchments to the ground before the eyes of all right-thinking men. I'll do it.
ASLAKSEN. But all the same be reasonable, doctor; proceed with moderation...
BILLING. Not at all, not at all; don't spare for dynamite.
DR STOCKMANN (going on imperturbably) For, remember that henceforth it is not merely a question of water works and sewers.
No, the whole of society must be cleansed, disinfected.
BILLING. There sounds the word of salvation!
https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/p/american-domestic-bioterrorism-program