Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates the way that the vigorous twentieth-century anti-tuberculosis campaign cleaned up the home, transforming the domestic microenvironment and the roles and duties of the female housekeepers in the process.

Paper long abstract:

One of the priorities of the twentieth-century anti-tuberculosis campaign was to stop early childhood infections, which were particularly dangerous and which mainly took place at home. This made the domestic environment a central target for tuberculosis-related public health efforts. In the militaristic rhetoric of the day, mothers were called to arms to defend their children against the germ, with cleanliness as their main weapon. Cleaning became an emotionally loaded duty with the children’s lives at stake. It is well known that the threat of tuberculosis influenced housing, domestic architecture and furnishings. What has received less attention is the impact of the campaign on the ”domestic microbiome” (Martin et al. 2015). Three commonplace prescriptions in particular influenced the latter: to remove any visible dirt and dust, to apply germicidal chemical substances like Lysol on the surfaces at home and to keep the home well-ventilated at all times. While the former impoverished the domestic microbiome, the latter enriched it by opening the domestic space up and connecting it with the natural environment. While there is no way to measure the exact impact of the transformation biologically, we can grasp some of its the social and experiental aspects by means of historical narrative sources, which in this paper are mainly printed cleaning education material produced by the anti-tuberculosis campaign and two major collections of written first-hand reminiscences, one focusing on the personal experiences of nurses and the other on the experiences of people who suffered from tuberculosis.