Improving Public Health in France

The Local Political Mobilization in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The paper is focused on the French improvement of life expectancy, especially during the 19th century. A precise analysis of an industrial town (Le Creusot) gives some elements about the importance of the urban penalty in mortality and also on the factors able to compensate the new bad conditions linked to the sudden increase of the population in these cities. It also emphasise the importance of the municipal level in the public health field. For the Republican, after 1871, often non active catholic elite, the social justice in the attribution of relief was linked to transparency of procedures. That led to a reflection about the objectiveness of the criterion chosen to decide who will be relieved. The reason why the nuns were dismissed and left place to municipal employees and professionnalization. Introduced to compensate the uncertainty of workers revenues, the system was rapidly linked to health perspectives and medical cares, even to preventive medicine.