Working for Health in the Anthropocene: The Environmental Imagination in the Establishment of Occupational Therapy, 1890–1920
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Labour, Occupation and the Environment
A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby … The man is now a man.(cited in Thompson 1976, p. 32)
1.2. Occupation as a Critique of Industrial Society
2. Sources and Methods
3. Results and Discussion
3.1. Redemption through Labour
The greatest advance in the history of human civilisation was the step from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic Age, … when man had learned to cultivate plants, to domesticate animals, to perfect his tools. Man struggled with nature, and he is conquering it gradually through his intelligence, inventiveness, and skill.Man has to work in order to live—and this is good. Work gives significance to our life. It ennobles it. … Work balances our life and is therefore an essential factor of health.
An interpretation of the state of nature as potentially good but worthless without improvement is integral to the Enlightenment’s narrative of Recovery through progress, property, and polity. While nature has the potential to provide humans with the necessities of life, it is doomed to lie in waste unless transformed by human intellectual and physical labor.
3.2. Conservation versus Waste
Barton’s approach was by no means unusual in early writings in occupational therapy and is mirrored in even more striking passages in the work of Herbert Hall:Because the number of dependents which can be maintained by any community necessarily rests upon that proportion of the population which is not dependent—the producers; because the great war has so rapidly increased the number of dependents and decreased the number of producers as to make this fact apparent not only to the student but also to the common business man, interest in the subjects of Occupational Therapy and Re-education has developed so rapidly that it is impossible for but few to keep pace with new ideas, methods and developments contained in those subjects.
Every stroke of the shovel and hoe that does not overtax the strength is clear gain to the patient, and to the commonwealth. … The time has come when economy and therapeutics both demand the raising of crops, road-making, the grading and draining of land.
Some time ago I watched with keen interest the clearing of a rocky New England pasture by the patients of an asylum. They not only picked up the small stones, but they dynamited the boulders and carried the crop of stones to a crusher which produced first-class material for road building and cement construction. … It was a sight to cheer the heart of anyone who has understood the burden of the handicapped.
The outgrowth of conservation, the inevitable result, is national efficiency. In the great commercial struggle between nations which is eventually to determine the welfare of all, national efficiency will be the deciding factor. So from every point of view conservation is a good thing for the American people.
3.3. The Pastoral and the Rehabilitation of Lost Bodies/Places
3.4. Well-Being and the Holistic Environment
4. Conclusions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
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Hudson, M. Working for Health in the Anthropocene: The Environmental Imagination in the Establishment of Occupational Therapy, 1890–1920. Histories 2024, 4, 394-404. https://doi.org/10.3390/histories4030019
Hudson M. Working for Health in the Anthropocene: The Environmental Imagination in the Establishment of Occupational Therapy, 1890–1920. Histories. 2024; 4(3):394-404. https://doi.org/10.3390/histories4030019
Chicago/Turabian StyleHudson, Mark. 2024. "Working for Health in the Anthropocene: The Environmental Imagination in the Establishment of Occupational Therapy, 1890–1920" Histories 4, no. 3: 394-404. https://doi.org/10.3390/histories4030019
APA StyleHudson, M. (2024). Working for Health in the Anthropocene: The Environmental Imagination in the Establishment of Occupational Therapy, 1890–1920. Histories, 4(3), 394-404. https://doi.org/10.3390/histories4030019