Hygiène publique et construction de l’ Etat grec, 1833 - 1845

This study is about the organization of public hygiene in the kingdom of Greece between 1833, when prince Otto of Bavaria ascends to the throne, and 1845, when the political and epidemiological frontiers of the kingdom are traced by a complete system of lazarettos and sanitary offices. We will firstly analyze the structures of sanitary prevention in the interior of the country (vaccinators, public health doctors, municipal doctors) as well as at its frontiers, and then we will focus on the measures against contagious diseases (such as the plague and smallpox) and against miasmas. We are also interested in examining the main diseases that determine the mortality of the period under scrutiny and the medical theories that explain the applicable sanitary measures. At the same time, we will review some of the aspects of the classical distinction of Erwin Ackerknecht between contagionism and miasmatic theory. Finally, we will study the difficult formation of an official group of medical professionals. The interest in public hygiene imposes the study of the biological construction of the state and, subsequently, of the state itself. Public hygiene defines the threats which it tries to prevent, and it creates and secures the collectivity. In the Police State of thecameralist king Otto, these developments are controlled by the bureaucracy, the administration, the public force and the science of medical police. Its purpose is to construct and order the public space, the space of state action, which is natural as well as social. This action of ordering imposes the centralization of health and at the same time it normalizes the natural elements and the social forces so that they can coordinate without resistance; in other words, the action of ordering pacifies. Medical police controls these processes by reconfiguring the ties that bind individuals with each other and with the geography, the nature and their diseases.