Disease and Public Health Failures

Despite medical advances, preventable diseases ravaged poor neighborhoods. The geographic distribution of disease mapped social inequality precisely. Tuberculosis, typhoid, and infant mortality concentrated where poverty, overcrowding, and poor sanitation intersected.

Tuberculosis killed 150,000 French annually, earning the name "white plague." In working-class arrondissements, entire families succumbed in overcrowded apartments. The disease became shamefully associated with poverty rather than romantically with artistic sensibility. Employers fired workers showing symptoms. Families hid infected members, spreading contagion.

Infant mortality revealed maternal and child health failures. In wealthy neighborhoods, 50 per 1,000 infants died before age one. In poor areas, rates tripled. Contaminated milk, inadequate prenatal care, and mothers returning to work immediately after birth contributed to deaths. The Goutte de Lait stations providing sterilized milk saved lives but reached fraction of needy families.

Venereal disease spread unchecked despite regulation system. Syphilis and gonorrhea infected all classes but concentrated among poor lacking treatment access. The disease's stages—initial sores, temporary remission, eventual madness and death—created false hope and delayed treatment. Congenital syphilis condemned children to lifetimes of suffering.

Alcoholism, particularly absinthe-related, destroyed families. Men drank wages, beat wives, and neglected children. Women drank to escape misery. Children grew up in taverns, sampling drinks early. The temperance movement, dominated by middle-class women, failed to address alcoholism's social roots while succeeding in banning absinthe in 1915.

Mental health services barely existed for the poor. Depression, anxiety, and trauma went untreated except when erupting in violence requiring asylum commitment. The daily grinding stress of poverty—uncertainty, powerlessness, constant crisis—created psychological damage unrecognized by Belle Époque medicine.