Emotional Hygiene: Care and Control of Infectious Diseases in Turn of the Century Sydney

Abstract: This article examines how powerful and regulatory emotions shaped the emergence and enforcement of new hygienic norms during infectious disease outbreaks in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Sydney. In a period of physical and epistemic transformation, emotionally charged public communication produced both interventionist and internalised forms of action. Such communication made particular behaviours feel appropriate or inappropriate based on learned understandings. Hygienic rules and knowledge were thus underwritten by an emotional regime. Shifting norms around tuberculosis and plague were not only protective but also productive, determining who could access the rights of the state and who was subject to its coercive power. Emotions, mobilised through the regulation of bodily practices such as spitting and grooming, enabled the diffusion of public health governance across bodies and communities, but they also made that power unstable.