Reshaping the English Landscape to Minimize Disease

Reshaping the English Landscape to Minimize Disease Professor Robert Hewitt Professor Hala Nassar Department of Planning and Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture Landscape Architecture Clemson University, USA Clemson University, USA

Professors Hewitt and Nassar teach courses in planning and landscape architecture at Clemson University in the United States. They are practicing landscape architects working internationally on urban design projects that address sustainability and human health. Their research interests include the influence of medicine on environmental design and international education. Their research on medicine and public health addresses both historical and contemporary changes to urban areas based on medical thought.

Background Steady exchanges of medical knowledge between Europe and England, and popular beliefs that environmental modification alleviated urban disease and improved health, contributed to the transformation of rapidly urbanizing nineteenth-century England in order to create healthier urban landscapes.

Medical thought played a meaningful role in this structural and functional transformation of the nineteenth-century English urban landscape, particularly in terms of urban features such as hospitals, asylums, almshouses, penitentiaries, sewerage systems, parks, and cemeteries.

This first of two courses illustrates the influence of medial thought on the design of 19th-century English urban landscape through an examination of English physician Thomas Southwood Smith, English public health advocate Edwin Chadwick, and English landscape gardener John Loudon’s writings and work.

The Industrial City as Source of Disease With the rise of industrial society, particularly in England beginning in the late 18th century, dense over- crowded and polluted urban areas were increasingly perceived as the location of poverty and disease. Figure 1 London circa 1850

During the early 19th century, English public health advocate Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890) and physician Thomas Southwood Smith (1788-1861) overturned the prevailing medical view that poverty was a contributing factor to disease as suggested by French physician Louis-Rene Villerme (1782-1863). (LaBerge, 1992)

Instead they surmised that poverty was the result of environmentally-based disease and sickness Evidence of their beliefs about the environmental etiology of disease is illustrated in Edwin Chadwick’s report on The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population (1842), and in Thomas Southwood Smith’s A Treatise on Fever (1830).

Early 19th-Century Change in Medical Theory The change in theory within the British medical community to an environmental basis for disease etiology like that advocated by Edwin Chadwick was closely related to miasma theories. (Hamlin 1992) Figure 2 Sir Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890)

Miasma theories suggested that specific soil types, climates, topographies, water and sun conditions contributed to the formation of an unknown gas that was the cause or the “predisposing condition “of many common diseases.

Miasma , Specificity, and the Environment The British medical community’s acceptance of miasma theories strengthened the medical doctrine of “specificity” that tied an individual’s physiological condition to a specific geographic local and climate. Figure 3 I9th-Century Medical Diagram of the Average Monthly Temperatures and their Recorded Ranges

The widespread adoption of “specificity” and miasma theories prompted greater awareness of meteorological and environmental conditions among physicians, and a increased interest in documenting apparent meteorological and environmental sources of disease. (Cassedy, 1986; Tomes, 1997)

Medical Topographies One important kind of documentation widely used by period physicians was the medical topography. Medical topographies sought to identify environmental characteristics associated with disease including seven conditions: Figure 4 Medical Topography of St. Louis, Missouri

(a) the speed, agitation, and depth of water bodies, (b) the degree of mixing between fresh and salt waters, (c) wetland conditions, (d) speed, direction and moisture content of air, (e) the amount of trees for oxygenation and mechanical cleansing of air, (f) the density and types of vegetation, and (g) soil types. (Jones, 1967; Warner, 1986; Rosenberg, 1960)

Miasma Theory Shapes the Landscape During this period, these specific environmental characteristics associated with miasma were described as important to the creation of urban environments by those who designed the English landscape and shaped public opinion. Figure 5 John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843)

For example, with the publication of the Encyclopedia of Gardening in 1822, John Loudon (1783-1843), a leading authority on issues of climate, public health, and the design of public and private landscapes, began to relate the creation of urban environments with alleviating miasma to improve public health

Parks and Cemeteries as Breathing Places In recognition of increasing public sentiment for the establishment of public parks and walks in England, Loudon proposed the creation of healthier public open spaces that provided “Breathing Places” to counteract miasma. Figure 6John Claudius Loudon: Proposed Church Cemetery

In 1829 he proposed alternating 1 mile green belts surrounding built up areas in London to alleviate miasma. And in1840 Loudon advocated for the development of park-like cemeteries sufficiently large to serve as breathing places

Design Guidelines to Avoid Miasma Specific environmental characteristics associated with disease and miasma found in Loudon’s proposals for public parks and cemeteries address the danger of gases emanating from soil, the use of plants to clean the air, and sun exposure to reduce gas. Figure 7John Claudius Loudon: Proposed Public Cemetery Landscape

For example, in Loudon’s treatise on laying out cemeteries, he recommended that: (a) trees and shrubs should not impede the circulation of air and the drying effect of the sun on soil, (b) that planting individual trees is best to avoid dampness, and (c) that trees with bulky heads should be avoided on level or low ground so not to collect dampness in summer.

Miasma and “Gardenesque” Landscape Loudon outlined a landscape design rationale to counteract the effects of environmental conditions associated with miasma when designing public parks and private residences that he called the “Gardenesque” style. Figure 8 John Loudon : Proposed Residence in the “Gardenesque “ style

“Gardenesque” landscape provided good air circulation and kept trees from ponding watery “exhalations of gas” from moist ground or transpiration. Trees and plants were to be planted separately with pebbles underneath within lawn areas to prevent the accumulation of organic material that could produce miasma where people congregated.

The wide publication of work by John Claudius Loudon and others who designed and built English urban landscapes in conjunction with the widely published medical topographies that identified environmental characteristics associated with disease and miasma significantly influenced the development of urban design ideas in America (Please see course 2 to learn about the influence of medical theory on urban design in America.)

References Beverage, C E., Hoffman, C, eds. (1997) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: Defending the Union, London and Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press Cassedy, J. H. (1986) Medicine and American Growth, 1800-1860, Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press Drake, A. (1854) A Systematic Treatise, Historical, Etiological, and Practical, on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America, as they Appear in the Caucasian, African, Indian and Esquimaux Varieties of its Population, ed. by S. Hanbury Smith, Francis G. Smith, 2nd. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Brambo & Co Hamlin, C. (1992) "Predisposing Causes and Public Health in Early Nineteenth-Century Medical Thought," Bull. Soc. Hist. Med., 5:1, 41-70.

Reshaping the English Landscape to Minimize Disease