Authors:

Abstract

The dangers of attendance. About the Genesis of Health Care in Dutch Schools (c. 1900)

In this article, the authors discuss the origins of the school medical service in the Netherlands. They focus on the period of transition from nineteenth-century concern for school hygiene – focusing on the improvement of buildings, school desks and timetables – to twentieth-century prevention of diseases and infirmities through medical inspection of pupils’ health by school doctors. The research shows that in the Netherlands, when compared to Belgium and England, the state played only a minor role in this respect, as no legislation was introduced. Moreover, the instructions of the first generation of municipal school doctors were limited to medical examination; treatment of the illnesses they found continued to be the privilege of private practitioners. The sectarian character of Dutch society around 1900 seems to have been an important circumstance, stimulating restraint from interfering with religion-based education and its pupils in particular on the part of the government. School doctors’ limited instruction appears to have been crucial for the acceptance of the service for denominational groups. Teachers’ organisations welcomed the service, as they admitted their own lack of hygienic knowledge and the service did not interfere with teaching itself. Nevertheless, compulsory education seems to have ruled out other solutions to reduce the dangers of classroom education, particularly catching contagious and other ‘school’ diseases. The medical profession did not have to act as imperialists to become the protector of children that were forced to go to school. In the Netherlands, school medical inspection was created by a society that no longer accepted the health hazards of classroom education.

Keywords: Health care, Schools, Netherlands, 1900