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American sunshine : diseases of darkness and the quest for natural light / Daniel Freund.
De Gruyter University of Chicago Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013 Available online
View online- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Freund, Daniel.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Sunshine--Environmental aspects.
- Sunshine.
- Urban ecology (Sociology)--United States.
- Urban ecology (Sociology).
- Climatotherapy.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (226 p.)
- Place of Publication:
- Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2012.
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- In the second half of the nineteenth century, American cities began to go dark. Hulking new buildings overspread blocks, pollution obscured the skies, and glass and smog screened out the health-giving rays of the sun. Doctors fed anxities about these new conditions with claims about a rising tide of the "diseases of darkness," especially rickets and tuberculosis. In American Sunshine, Daniel Freund tracks the obsession with sunlight from those bleak days into the twentieth century. Before long, social reformers, medical professionals, scientists, and a growing nudist movement proffered remedies for America's new dark age. Architects, city planners, and politicians made access to sunlight central to public housing and public health. and entrepreneurs, dairymen, and tourism boosters transformed the pursuit of sunlight and its effects into a commodity. Within this historical context, Freund sheds light on important questions about the commodification of health and nature and makes an original contribution to the histories of cities, consumerism, the environment, and medicine.
- Contents:
- Toward a history of natural light
- The darkening city, 1850-1920
- The dawn of scientific sunlight
- Sun cures
- Popular enthusiasms: eugenists, nudists, builders, modern mothers, and the sun cult
- Climate tourism and its alternative
- Epilogue: sunlight into the twenty-first century.
- Notes:
- Description based upon print version of record.
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)
- ISBN:
- 9786613529947
- 9781280126086
- 1280126086
- 9780226262833
- 0226262839
- OCLC:
- 781634234
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