In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Belgian Sea Hospitals and the Child at Risk:Exploring an Educational Paradox
  • Bruno Vanobbergen (bio)

Founded in 1877, the Société Royale de Médecine Publique du Royaume de Belgique (the Belgian Royal Society of Public Healthcare) grew into one of the most important forums in the struggle for improved hygiene in Belgium. The society adopted the methods of Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874), who introduced social statistics as a discipline and thus promoted a positivistic approach to the study of social problems. It published a monthly report, the Tablettes Mensuelles de la Société Royale de Médecine Publique de Belgique (Monthly Report of the Belgian Royal Society of Public Healthcare) containing charts of the morbidity and mortality figures for each province or region. The report paid particular attention to child mortality and the difference between urban and rural child health.

Hygienists considered cities dangerous for (poor) children because of the high rates of alcoholism, tuberculosis, and syphilis.1 As a result, they viewed urban/rural differences in health not as a lack of access to medical care or resulting from local public health practices, but as indicators of social disorder. To hygienists, cities, metaphorically speaking, represented the sick and weak parts of the social body. Thus the society, along with other philanthropic and hygienist organizations, became increasingly convinced that poor children had to be removed to healthier and natural places for short- or long-term stays in order to promote their well-being. Ideas of hygiene, desire for an orderly society, and education converged and resulted in the creation of open-air schools, summer camps, and sea hospitals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.2 This article examines sea hospitals.

The first European sea hospitals developed between 1860 and 1880. In Venice, Italy, the Ospizi Marini of Dr. Barellai opened in 1861.3 That same year, in France the Hôpital Maritime de la ville de Paris was built in Berck-sur-Mer. Undergirding the creation of sea hospitals were three ideas—most immediately the effort to promote child welfare through exposure to fresh, country [End Page 234] air—secondly, fears about a decline in public health, and finally, an interest in the moral reclamation and order of the nation. To the outrage of hygienists, Belgium lagged behind other European nations in creating sea hospitals. They voiced their concerns at the Hygiene Congress in Brussels in 1876, and shortly afterward the General Council of the Civil Hospices of Brussels initiated the construction of a sea hospital.4 In August 1876, the Council filed a request with the government seeking access to plans of available plots along the Belgian coast. In addition, the General Council made contact with architect Hendrik Beyaert (1823–1894), who, shortly afterwards, left for Italy to study the maritime institute of Venice. Ultimately, the General Council, lacking the funds to realize its ambitious building plan for a sea hospital, chose an alternative path. In October 1878, the General Council asked Dr. Vanden Abeele to confirm whether he was expanding a private sea hospital for weak children in Wenduine, a small town at the Belgian coast. After Vanden Abeele revealed he was doing so, the General Council reached out to him. On June 11, 1881, a letter from Dr. Vanden Abeele informed the Council of the completion of a large part of the Sea Hospital at Wenduine. "I am currently involved in furnishing the building," he wrote, adding, "I would be able to accept a certain number of your young pupils by the 10th of July. In order to make the initial furnishing easier, I would prefer, for the first month, to have only girls. Boys are allowed to arrive from the month of August on."5 At that point, children began to be sent from Brussels to Wenduine.

At the same time, fortuitously, the General Council received a bequest of half a million Belgian francs from Viscount Roger de Grimberghe. His will stipulated that it had to be used to create "a hospital for poor and rachitic children from the Brussels region, which will be given the name 'Hôpital Maritime Roger de Grimberghe.'"6 After extensive discussions about the proper location and...

pdf

Share