Keelan Shorten

The concept of “human economy”

A phrase coined by R. Goldscheid in 1911, describing how for industrial countries whose
economy relied on labour, the human body became a key part of the economy. The body
was indeed an economic resource – he called it “organic capital”. Like other parts of the
economy, the body had to be nourished and cultivated so that it continued being productive
and efficient, which is why so much thought was put into nutrition and calorie intake during
this era. This is reflected in Max Rubner’s essay where he describes the calorie intake
needed to sustain nutrition.
The perception of the criminal as being inherently different in nature to modern, civilised
man
19th century Italian anthropologist Lombroso wrote of criminals as being essentially
different, naturally, to the rest of society. He believed that their “craving for evil” came from
their reversion to to the “ferocious instincts of primitive humanity”. They belonged to a
lower level on the evolutionary ladder, and thus didn’t possess the moral compass of the
evolved, civilised person. This, he believed, was demonstrated in their physical taxonomy -
“enormous jaws, high cheekbones, superciliary arches...” - but most notably in their skulls,
which in the example of Villela manifested itself as a depression in the skull which is not
found in humans or even in higher primates, but only in lower species like lemurs. This
pointed, in Lombroso’s opinion, to the status of the criminal as naturally lower, indeed less
evolved and more primitive, than civilised people.
The growth of anthropometrics and the standardisation of the body
This period was when the human body became something which could be quantified and
everything about it measured. This led to ideals of what the ‘normal’, or ‘standard’ body
should be. The establishment of the concept of there being a standard or ideal body led to a
hierarchisation of people: for example, Lombroso’s categorisation of criminals as being
lesser beings due to a difference in Villela’s skull, or Galton questioning if human ability was
hereditary.

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Eleanor Gaylard

‘Thinness’ as a standard shaped by colonialism

Scholarly focus on the creation of a ‘standard’ beauty type as thin

is largely focussed on the west, but this omits the key role played
by interactions with non-western (particularly colonial) societies
that allowed these standards to emerge. It also ignores the role
these played in allowing classifications of non-western countries
as ‘savage’ to continue. In this, it directly assisted the justification
of colonialism. Western travellers’ descriptions of ‘fat’ peoples
within colonial and non-western nations often would not only
focus on physical corpulence (which was mostly limited to elites
regardless) but also on a corpulence ‘of mind’, which illustrates
the desire to create a standard non-western body, as fat. This
‘fatness’ could even be mental (synonymous with immorality) if
physical evidence could not be found – highlighting the extent to
which this standardisation was striven for against all evidence. To
the left is a depiction of a Khoikhoi which highlights the
supposedly undesirable appearances of the tribe’s women.

Louis Agassiz and Polygenism

Agassiz’s work on polygenism justified racism and

white supremacy through the claims that ‘different
human races had biologically distinct origins’
(Irmscher), within which white people were the
‘standard’ and black people were inferior. His work
influenced the formalisation of segregation in the
United States. The recovered daguerreotypes he
commissioned (of predominately black and mixed
subjects, in order to compare them to white ones)
highlight the disturbing pseudo-scientific lens through
which his work functioned, with him attempting to
create typologies out of the random subject’s photos,
to imbue them with an absent meaning about the
typologies of races.

Louis Leakey

Responsible for demonstrating that all humans evolved in Africa, upsetting the above ideas of the
racist ‘standardising’ doctrines of polygenism and the like. In this, he upset ideas of there being a
‘standard’, progressed human form – routing all in the same origins. He was also somewhat of a
God, and during his time researching would get into shouting matches opposing female genital
mutilation, and was key in developing organisations to protect wildlife.

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Grace Burridge

First Observation:
The focus in Dietrich Milles’ article on the human body as a form of a machine is very
interesting. In the 1920s E.W. Hope talked about this idea of the ‘human combustion
machine’ in terms of a way of using the body to maximise the labour efficiency of workers.
This led to many investigations and conclusions by labour physiologists about what was
important. These included aspects such as sufficient proteins, vitamins and enough calories
to cover daily energy consumption. There was also a focus on the ways that they could
make the diets of the workers as efficient and nutritious as possible. Max Rubner thought
that nutrition could prevent problems that came from overworking and stop the
degeneration of the body and so Rubner investigated the different specific portions of food
that could make this possible.
Second Observation:
There were attempts to feed the poor as efficiently and cheaply as possible. This is evident
through an extract from Essay on Food by Benjamin Thompson. This stresses the discovery
of a certain type of soup with key ingredients which are designed to be cheap and nutritious
and keep the working man full for as long as possible. The soup had ingredients such as
pearl barley, pieces of bread and potatoes. This extract also suggested that the way that the
food was prepared and cooked and actions such as boiling could have big effects on the
food’s taste and nutritional value and thus on the body.
Third Observation:
In Max Rubner’s The Laws of Energy Consumption in Nutrition (1902) he suggests that the
‘balance of nutrition’ is important. This perhaps has some possible similarities with
contemporary thinking which focuses on ideas about a balanced diet. There are also other
ways in which this seems to reflect present-day ideas with Rubner’s concentration on
proteins, fats and carbohydrates. He also focuses on the way that these change in the body
through digestion. This again has somewhat of a similarity to some ideas about nutrition
today.
Grace Langton-Wignall

All of my observations this week centre on the idea of perfection. During the course of the
nineteenth century, in the wake of industrialism and productivism, there was a fascination of
humanity being at its prime, and this very much so translated into ideologies about the body.

This is first shown through the abundance of ideas surrounding labour and efficiency. The fervent
objectification of the human body is striking throughout the primary sources, often referring to
human beings as motors or engines. Milles rightfully warns of the, “horrifying consequences of
sociobiological dietetics,” as well as, “all attempts to organize human life in the same way as engine
are built.” This culture of productivity and accomplishment for humankind has come into both the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the form of intelligence rather than physical labour power.
Goldstein explores the work of Francis Galton on psychometrics, some of the first of its kind, in
measuring the capabilities of the human mind.

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Galton came to conclusions of genetic intelligence, which brings me onto harrowing philosophies of
scientific racism, sexism and eugenics that held a place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
This was particularly looked at by Horn in his book on criminologist Cesare Lombroso. Criminology is
a study I have overlooked when looking at societal issues, but its importance in bridging the gap
between sociology and policy through laws and courts is incredibly valuable to historians. Horn
describes the nature of Lombroso’s work and his focus on evolution and anthropology. Lombroso
argues that criminals are evolutionarily comparable to children, people of colour and women, all of
which fall under the category of delinquency. Such eugenic ideologies are reflected in the
governments and politics of most European states to this day, and the assumption that straight-
white-European males are the pinnacle of human evolution defines this.

An issue which I found particularly interesting about these ideas of criminality was the criminality of
women. Lombroso’s argument that women are just as criminal, if not more criminal than men on
account of their ‘condition’, has been lambasted on account of the fact that too few women are
criminals and they presented little sign of social dangerousness. His use of Aristotelian teleological
theory on women, his work gained some traction. Lombroso’s ideas on older women are particularly
interesting. He theorises that younger women can cover their criminality with their youth and
sexuality, whereas women’s true colours become revealed when they are older and infertile, despite
older women being more revered as older and wiser, even as more masculine on account of their
inability to bear children - villainising women and their bodies has been a constant theme
throughout history.

Nikola Borowska

- The motivations behind the institutionalising of public health and the move toward
the public sphere in quantifying the ‘normal’ body is interesting – the creation of
calories and a uniform approach to a ‘one fits all’ method of diet parallels the
process of industrialisation and the approach to the human body as one of a lesser
intricacy than earlier approaches.

- The power dynamics involved with control over the food available in public spaces
such as prisons, workhouses, and the military suggest not only the practical control
of people’s diet, but also the way in which public institutions wield power over the
poor, and those who have no choice but to accept the food provided by these
increasingly powerful bodies.

- The link between an attempt to quantify and categorise the body and implications of
a superior or inferior nature is an overarching concept – the attempt to draw
correlation between the pursuit of crime and physical characteristics mirrors the rise
of the scientific method in general approaches to quantifying fields which were
previously thought to be linked to external, spiritual, or environmental factors rather
than those of a physical type.

Rory Higgins

1. Quantifying the body for the efficiency of Capitalism

From the excerpt from Thompson’s Essay on Food 1795, by the advent of the nineteenth century the
body was being transformed from a personal, individual item to a mass belonging of the state, in this

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case through theories on the minimum amount of soup ingredients an individual needs from the
Poor Law system. An earlier version of German ‘Voit Standard’ of calory intake, again described by
Dietrich Milles as a criteria for “optimum utilization of human labour”, Thompson scientific thesis on
the necessary requirements for a hearty meal in relation to cost is a powerful indication of how
industrial development intertwined with the history of medicine. A step removed from well-being
from a humanitarian perspective, the body, under early capitalism, is viewed as a tool to provide
work for profit, or as later described by EW Hope in the 1920s, as an “internal combustion engine”
instead of a person or as a member of a community. Interesting to note how socioeconomic
developments in Europe, with Milles in particular pointing to the “human economy” of WW1,
directly effected understandings of individuality and health.

2. Classification of the body and the beginnings of modern Eugenics

As brought up by Harvey Goldstein, there is a passive assumption that increased data and
categorization of humans is a net positive for society. Cesare Lombroso’s 1876 study of criminals
attempts to quantify the body into distinguishable characteristics, such as height, weight, build and
more subjective observations such as head shape, types of eyes (eg “Habitual murderers have a cold,
glassy stare”) or overall aesthetics (eg “Rapists .. have sparkly eyes, delicate features”). While
holding the best intentions in his research into criminal anthropology, with historians Mary Gibson
and Mark Seymour interpreting a “socialist sympathy” in his attempt to prevent crime, classifying
bodies based on genetic makeup has troubling historical connotations. Indeed, Lombroso himself
legitimizes his research historically, claiming “Archaeologists have established that the cruelest of
the Caesars – Commodus, Nero, and Tiberius – had jug ears”, a feature he connects to “nearly all
criminals”. However this prejudice of individuals temperament, and casting individuals as a danger
to the state and others based off uncontrollable genetic features, which has connotations to
ethnicity, has noticed by Dietrich Milles to be later channeled into the social policy of the Nazi Party.

3. Political connotations of body quantification

Social history, such as Thompson’s Essay on Food, and the advancement of science and medicine are
directly linked. Anson Rabinach opens his article on the human motor by connecting the advent of
science, notably Hermann von Helmholtz theory of energy conservation 1847 (which have stark
resemblance to Thompson’s humanitarian efforts to feed the masses on a minimum diet) to the
ideas of modern productivism, the “belief that human society and nature are linked by the primacy
and identity of all productive society, whether of labourers, of machines, or of natural forces”, which
stood in stark contrast to previous centuries adherence to Descartes Discourse on Method 1637.
What one has to remember these intellectual thoughts on diet and productiveness were not
occurring in the abstract, and held real political consequences. Indeed, European conceptions of the
human body as a motor to output work, systematic of the capitalist economic organizations of these
states, played a vital role in late nineteen and early twentieth political action. The language of ‘work’
and productiveness was taken from the scientific and social world and applied to political theories of
the day, indeed Marxist though mentions in depth overcoming physical fatigue from exertion in the
factories through overcoming political repression, through workers control over government.

Gabriella Shennan

1. Changes in the meaning of the body (rise of criminal anthropology and physiognomy)
 One of the most interesting shifts in the study of the human body in the 19th century was the
growing connection made between the internal and external characteristics of the body and its

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 features, and moral and intellectual characteristics or tendencies shown. Statistician Quetelet,
for example, emphasised in his treatise the importance of studying bodily proportions to
uncover “the moral anatomy of man”, believing that it was important to analyse the
differences in how particular ‘bodies’, such as those of criminals, developed and decayed in
comparison to ‘normal’ people. Similarly, Lombroso in his book ‘Criminal Man’, drew
sweeping generalisations and conclusions about key bodily characteristics that could identify
criminals, based on his work studying criminals in Italy: “It can even be said that each type of
crime is committed by men with particular physiognomic characteristics… thieves are notable
for their expressive faces and manual dexterity…Rapists…nearly always have sparkling eyes,
delicate features, and swollen lips and eyelids”.
 Another interesting development we can see is the growing opinion that the ‘meaning’ of the
body is shaped by one’s external environment. Quetelet, for example, believed “Society
includes within itself the germs of all the crimes committed…It is the social state, in some
measure, which prepares these crimes, and the criminal is merely the instrument to execute
them”. He suggests, for example, that the development of man might be affected by factors
such as the climate. This conflicts with Lombroso’s work which seems to suggest the
inherent, biologically ingrained nature of criminality by focusing on evolutionary features:
“Like subspecies of a common race, all these categories of offenders nevertheless exhibit
some features of the born criminal”.

2. Using the body to justify social, moral and political hierarchies:

 Gender hierarchies: Emphasis placed on the normality of the male body. Lombroso simply
concludes that, from his samples, “female criminals tend to be masculine”. He also
emphasised the lower amount of variability in the female body and used this to justify their
greater inferiority compare to men, as a sign of their failure to evolve.
 Age hierarchies: Horn highlights how the connection Lombroso made between the
backwardness or immature development of the body to criminality changed the way in which
he viewed children scientifically- he believed that they “exhibited moral qualities that in an
adult would constitute a social danger”. So a parent-child, or teacher-child power dynamic
was justified by these means too, as he even advised teachers in 1895 to be wary of children
and to look for potential external signs indicating abnormal behaviour.
 Moral hierarchies: The rise of criminal anthropology and physiognomy took on a kind of
moral dimension in Lombroso’s condemnation of criminals as having “the ferocious instincts
of primitive humanity and the inferior animals”: new ways of measuring the body, the
identification of the “median occipital fossa” and physical abnormalities were used to
distance ‘moral’ contemporary society with the ‘immoral past’ and modern anomalies that
exhibit signs of savagery.
 Racial hierarchies: Horn describes how a growing connection was made in the 19th century
between European criminals and non-European ‘savages’- e.g. Lombroso made connections
in similar physical characteristics between the two groups, such as having a “low cranial
capacity” or “large or handleshaped ears”. He in turn linked these characteristics to general
evolutionary primitiveness by comparing, for example, the limited and broken language used
by early humans (e.g. lacking grammar) with the heavy reliance of criminals on things like
slang.

3. Changing ideas about how to supply and the uses of the body
 The rise of nutrition as a science. Particularly evident in Thompson’s ‘Essay on Food’ where
a priority is given to finding “the CHEAPEST, most SAVOURY, and most NOURISHING
food”. He emphasises the benefits of a soup made of ingredients such as pearl barley, potatoes
and cuttings of bread, for example, emphasising its its benefits for digestion, its ability to
satisfy hunger with relatively small portions, and its cheapness (each portion of the second
soup was at about one farthing). He therefore wants to emphasise just how crucial good
nutrition and cookery is in supporting the population- he says it is just as important as
agriculture in doing so, and suggests its use in places such as public hospital or workhouses.

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  The body as a site of energy exchange, or the rise of the ‘energetic’ body. Rubner emphasised
the importance of studying the intake and outage of the energy in the body, believing that “the
animal body is founded on energetic principles in its organisational arrangement”.
 Rise of labour as a scientific study: We can see in Taylor’s book evidence of the growing
objectification of labour- he describes how labourers were studied at the Midvale Steel
Company baed on their effectiveness and efficiency , and that proper labour management
required “scientific selection”, as some men were more suited to certain types of work that
could overall maximise efficiency.
 This links to the wider context in the 19th and 20th century, as industrialisation developed,
and the accompanying concerns with maximum efficiency and productivity, which fed into
labour physiology. Milles, for example, draws attention to how in the 1920s E.W. Hope, the
Professor of Public Health in Liverpool, compared the body to an engine, requiring fuel and
using energy to maintain its body temperature. Rabinbach similarly draws attention to this
idea of the ‘human motor’, making human bodies and industrial machines one and the same.
 Rise of labour physiology and the science of nutrition therefore have political purpose, used
in industrialisation to help maximise efficiency. Standards that were created, such as the ‘Voit
Standard’ (daily intake of an adult in protein for example, was established as 118g) were used
to inform food management at institutions like prisons or workhouses. Rubner established a
connection between the nutrients in a certain food and their influence on productivity.
 Milles highlights how this process of ‘industrial rationalization’ was given a serious (and
dangerous) boost in the First World War and in the recovery period after- particularly in
Germany, in order to recover as quickly as possible from the economic collapse. This
research into how many calories were needed and energy expenditure would in turn also lead
into the horrifying policies of the National Socialists, who were continuing this process of
investigating just how much humans could physically bear.

Eleanor Mann Class VII Observations

1. Politicisation of the early modern body: there was a noticeable political control over
the body, whether it be through state control, state health policy, or- in the case of
war- rationing of food. The extent of state control also varied by period and by the
needs of the state, as influenced by wider economic and social factors, such as
Industrialisation or World War Two. Milles’ analysis of the history of rational physical
economy was very useful in highlighting how, in Germany, war and the economic
and socio-political pressures exerted by the state on the modern body significantly
influenced national perceptions of food, work, and calorific intake. I think this is
interesting to consider in the context of the present day, given the government’s
controversial decision to include calories on menus in restaurants. Furthermore,
during covid-19, we witnessed a lot of control over the body by the state as people
were forced to isolate and cover certain parts of their body. This raises the question
as to what extent the body is autonomous or controlled by the state, and perhaps
indicates the long-term origins of these policies. The law was also often intertwined
with morality, as evidenced by Quetelet, who points to the state’s impact on human
development, although his early ideas about this (the treatise was written in 1842)
appear a little muddled and based on speculation as opposed to experiment. Ideas
about the body and its calorific requirements also impacted other institutions,
perhaps best exemplified in the control of a prisoners’ diet, which saw the state’s
ideals about calorific control and consumption be implemented legally. If one
applied Foucault’s theory of power to this controlling dynamic, however, it could be
argued that the state used these institutions to control sections of society, and the

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 control of food carries particular weight as not only an essential requirement to live
but also source of pleasure.
2. Morally dubious experiments: it was quite shocking to read about some of the
experiments which were conducted to provide the evidenced used to justify theories
of the body. Animal experiments, such as the starvation of rabbits in Rubner’s
excerpt, would in today’s context be seen as cruel, yet there is no indication or even
acknowledgement of pain or suffering in the extract. Moreover, perhaps more
surprising to read about was Nathan Zuntz’s open preference for hungry (starving)
subjects when understanding metabolism, intake and expenditure of energy- again,
something deemed to be ‘an important turning point’ in the understanding of the
workers’ body even by the secondary writer, Milles, in 1995. Perhaps it is best that
we don’t apply our own moral beliefs to the past, especially given the undoubted
hypocrisies that would arise. But it is nonetheless important to recognise the
foundations- often ones of inequality and hierarchical relationships (such as
patriarchy or even race in contexts such as colonialism and Nazi Germany) that these
theories about metabolism, energy and the industrial body were based on.
3. Commodification/objectification of the worker’s body: this topic’s reading, to a
much greater extent than previous topics, saw the commodification and
objectification of the body. This seemed most obvious in texts discussing the
‘efficiency’ of the worker’s body. This was clearly classed and gendered, and it was
interesting to see how political ideologies (see above) such as Marxism in the Detroit
murals, came into play later in the 20th century in order to protect workers from total
ownership by employers. Employers did appear to view their workers as another
means of production in the 19th century in particular, when industrialisation, global
pressures to translate work into capital were high, and worker rights low in a
patriarchal and elitist societal structure. Milles’ piece compared the body to an
engine, a metaphor which literally objectified the body into a means of production.
That said, it is interesting to reversely consider that perhaps these attitudes of
inferiority and control were sometimes of benefit to workers. After all, eventually,
concern for workers’ bodies would result in laws protecting them and their
productive capabilities, and there was a recognition in the early tracts that an over-
worked workforce would not be as productive. Therefore, there appears to have
been a tension between the morality of commodifying and controlling the worker’s
bodies and at times a paternalistic concern that could result in greater protection of
the worker.

Maddie Canning

Normal and Quantified Bodies Observations

1. It is interesting to note how Rubner, in Die Gesetze des Energieverbrauchs bei der Ernährung
(‘The Laws of Energy Consumption in Nutrition’) refers to the body as if its a machine. He talks of
metabolism in relation to “how much power is released in the body, and an “organism’s goals”. The
connotations of “power” and “goals” in this context, almost dehumanise the body by focusing only on
its efficacy. By proposing a total energetic body, Rubner equates its function to one of efficiency and
utility, thus mirroring contemporary social and economic thought surrounding the Industrial
Revolution. Secondly, Rubner’s “rate of living theory” also may have stemmed from the influence of
the Industrial Revolution. He proposed that it was an animal’s slow metabolism that increased its

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longevity. The metabolic rate of larger animals was proportionate to their size and therefore they were
able to outlive the smaller animals who supposedly burned energy quickly. Whilst this theory has
since been disproved in mammals it shows the socio-economic conditions in which Rubner was
writing. It harkens back to the idea that the more a machine is worked, and the harder it is worked, the
sooner it will be exhausted. This brings to mind the Industrial Revolution and highlights how
economic circumstance of a state affected perceptions of the body as a mere machine that could
provide labour

2. The invention of the ‘average’ body, homme moyen, saw Lambert- Adolphe Quetelet take
astronomy’s law of averages and apply it to people, and the human body. What was at stake was how
people saw themselves in relation to others which revolutionised the concept of the body as an
individual. Quetelet’s impact was one that made ‘average’ become ‘normal’, a concept that is still felt
today. A mathematical analysis of the body has parallels to the dehumanisation of the body in the
context of the Industrial Revolution also. Quetelet emphasises that the “social body” should be the
focus of research rather than “the peculiarities distinguishing the individuals composing it” (p7) as to
recognises the causes that influence society as a whole. The individual became error, and thus the
average man was the ‘perfect’ template from which bodies were made. This could have an effect on
social hierarchy relations ? Often governed by dominance relations, new dominance in relation to how
far a person equates to the homme moyen ?

4. Count Rumford, author of Essay on Food (1795), looked at the thermal conductivity of types
of cloth. Discovered convection currents; (as it is known today!) heat flow is inexhaustible.
However, in an Essay on Food he introduced barley-pea soup, what became know as
“Rumford soup”. He fed as many as 1500 workers a day with minimum fuel out of a public
kitchen (Redlich, 1971). This resulted in the underfeeding of many workers. It is important to
note that Rumford believed that water was food: “not a simple element but a compound, and
capable of being decomposed”. Nutrition was based upon cost effectiveness. Yet again, the
perception of the body was based upon how it could be utilised and the cheapest way to utilise
it. The establishment of soup kitchens = beneficial for the poor but was it brought about in
their interest ? It was also the cheapest way to relieve the poor. The idea of the ‘economic
diet’ double meaning ? Economic as in providing cheap meals, with obligatory sustenance,
and also being economically beneficial to a state in terms of the ability for the body to work.

Layla Barwell – Bullet Points for week 7

1. Links between overhauled medical schemas of the body and quantitative
understandings of diet
One area of interest to me in the reading was how the idea of the mechanised body linked
back to our reading regarding the change in medical understandings of the body. According
to Jewson, laboratory medicine stripped patients of their agency, and medical practitioners
had complete autonomy in their practices. Consequently, this gave practitioners the ability to
fully conceptualise the human body in a localised and scientific way, with the medical expert
able to discern which organ was responsible for the illness, rather than fitting to popular
humoural schemas, and also able to at will ignore the testimony of the patient to the lived
experience within their own body. Jewson says that this process was complete with the
transition to laboratory medicine, in which the patient was fully objectified as a test subject.
Thus scientific and anatomical models were fully able to take over.

This kind of mentality is also seen in the writings of nutritional scientists. Benjamin
Thompson, for example, totally disregards the fact that the German soldiers are essentially
surviving off of the same meal every day of boiled beef when he argues that “THERE IS NO
SOLDIER IN EUROPE WHOSE SITUATION IS MORE COMFORTABLE”, celebrating
the German army based purely on the energy content of the meals it provides. Max Rubner’s

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Die Gesetze des Energieverbrauchs bei der Ernährung was a ringleader of the later innovation
towards calory counting in the 1920s, universalising understandings of food based on how
productive it is towards being a useful member of society. Rubner’s research was of
particular interest post-1918 in Germany when the authorities wanted to avoid another
situation like the German famine in future by having better plans for the distribution of food
based on calories. Finally, Lambert-Adolphe Quetelet researched how particular diets could
affect individual organs, reflecting the localisation of medical knowledge.

Therefore, innovations in laboratory understandings of medicine and a more calory-based diet

go hand-in-hand.

2. Dubious quantification of the body

Another area of particular interest to me was analysing how racialised, gendered and classist
notions of the ideal body were crafted so that any evidence could be used to support the
superiority of the elite white man. The phrenologists in the reading were consistently
desperate to prove that they were not using anecdotal evidence but were much more lax when
setting up initial hypotheses before research or using sample sizes large enough to prove their
claims.

In the case of women, when the fact that women were statistically less likely to commit crime
challenged Lombroso’s assumption that cranial volume was inversely proportional to crime,
considering that women have smaller heads than men, Lombroso simply stated that women as
a whole all had “traits common to our malefactors”, so it was hard to establish a female
criminal phenotype. This, of course, doesn’t answer the question as to why women with
lower cranial volume were less likely to commit crime than men, and Lombroso went on to
try and create a female criminal phenotype anyway! Lombroso was only able to create a
sample size of twenty-one women and still attempted to establish a criminal phenotype,
noting that not a single woman was bald or ginger in his sample. Modern statistical research
shows that less than 1% of women suffer from complete baldness before the age of sixty, and
around 0.57% of Italians are ginger; thus, Lombroso’s findings would have been quite clearly
statistically insignificant to contemporaries, even without modern determinants of proof.
When considering racialised and class-specific criminal phenotypes, Lombroso could not
conclude either way whether the criminal phenotype was solely due to biology or could be
influenced by culture. In the case of race, Lombroso concluded that “savages had failed to
evolve”, and thus even people of colour brought into “civilised” society were predetermined
to commit crimes. Conversely, when considering why crime was much more predominant in
some Italian cities than others, such as more crime in Venice than Rome, or criminals being
around nine times more likely to be tattoed, Lombroso suggested that criminals had specific
“regional types” based on their upbringing.

Therefore, phrenology and other studies of racialised or gendered phenotypes of criminals are
classic cases of pseudoscience, with the scientific method and conclusions drawn essentially
shaped around pre-existing schemas regarding the inferiority of certain social, economic and
ethnic demographics.

3. Sensationalised nature of the human body

Finally, one area I found of interest throughout the reading was the rather hyperbolic ways of
describing the body, perhaps to make their research more appealing to the general population.
In the case of scientists attempting to improve the productivity of humans, the writers often
reached shocking conclusions regarding the ability of the application of scientific theory to

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improve profits. Frederick Winslow Taylor, for example, concluded that profits could be
improved by 118%, with staff cut down 72%, simply by applying “initiative and incentive”
for workers by explaining to those “so stupid” they could not understand maths the
importance of pacing themselves, marginally increasing wages, and preventing large teams
from working together. In the case of the phrenologists, “scientists” such as Lombroso
reached shocking conclusions about the inherent sin of children. Bernard Perez, for example,
compared all young children to “savage Dakotas” capable of “killing”, and one Italian study
concluded that as many as 45% of Italian children were “morally anomalous”. Finally,
Dietrich Milles highlighted how some nutritionists believed that they could precisely
calculate how many calories each person needed based on their work, such as 2,300 calories
for bookbinders, to create the ‘optimal’ societal worker. These dramatic claims throughout
the study of the history of the body perhaps demonstrate how researchers felt that there could
be a conservative societal resistance to accommodating new ideas to the more theological,
soul-based understanding of the body and thus were keen to produce dramatic results.

Laura Goodchild

Health and Productivity

It was interesting to read about how health became linked with productivity and industry within the
20th century. The Ford Production Methods 1936 highlights this with the ideas surrounding
increasing the standard of living mentioning increased production and efficient distribution as being
caused by a series of requirements being met. These requirements include: better housing, better
education, better recreation, better food and better health. This shows that health and production
was consciously linked within this period and that demands were made for the standard of living to
be increased. Miles explores this link between production and health within Germany, with the
German National Socialist Campaign focusing on health and hygiene. This campaign argued that
access to good health should be imperative, such as with the creation of the affordable Kraut
cookery book. Furthermore, this National Socialist Campaign also considered how many calories
humans need. It was suggested that the ordinary male requires 2400 calories but the males working
in heavy labour professions requires 6000 calories. Therefore it is evident that in the 20th century
health was linked with productivity and Industry and efforts were made to increase health in order
to cause an increased productivity.

Health and Gender

It is also fascinating to consider the link between health and gender. Firstly, women were also
perceived to have had an impact on the link between health and industrial productivity. Between
1932 and 1933, Diego Rivera created the Detroit Industry murals. These murals aimed to highlight
the importance of industry and Communist tropes were evident throughout. The link between
gender and productivity is clear with the depiction of an infant in the bulb of a plant. This picture
places an infant at the centre of the image, highlighting its importance. The use of tree roots
suggests the importance of nourishment at the beginning of life. This comment on access to
nourishment is linked to industry through the inclusion of plowshares, which links the nourishment
of the youth to the industry of agriculture. Thus, it is evident that the nourishment of children,
through the provisions of the mother, family and state, was important in regards to industry.

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 Rivera’s Infant in the Bulb of a
Plant

Women were also independently considered in the discussion around health in the 19th and 20th
centuries. Tarde focused on the perceived similarities between women and male criminals. For
instance, Tarde concludes that women have ‘less voluminous crania and brains that are less heavy’
than their male counterparts. This link between women and criminality showcases the inclusion of
women within discussions of health as well as the consideration of issues beyond the necessity for
good health.

Health studied through animals

The continual references to attempts to understand issues beyond the maintenance of health within
the 19th and 20th centuries is intriguing. Horn’s discussion of the use of animals to understand
human health highlights this. Horn considers how, in this period, the use of animals to understand
human health was prolific such as Ferri’s identification of twenty-two species of animals that
“commit murder, “ in an attempt to understand why humans do such practice. Further, Horn
explores how Lombroso criticised this as Ferri assumes that the act of animals killing each other can
be equated to human murder. Lombroso then went on to consider if the gap between human and
animal behave is decreased when the animals considered are domesticated. Lombroso compared
animal domestication to human civilisation. Therefore, it is clear that this period witnesses the use of
animals to consider human behaviour, the criticism and adaption of this practice but most
intriguingly, the consideration of what it means to be human alongside research into human health
with moves beyond attempts to maintain health, but to understand why human physical and mental
health is the way that it is.

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