Effective freedom definition12/11/2023 ![]() “The meddlesome philanthropist and compulsory fanatic have been enabled secretly to undermine the constitution, and set at naught the just rights and legal liberties of the people … There is no evil so great as loss of liberty nothing can ever compensate us for.” The language may be old-fashioned, but the sentiment feels utterly familiar. “Local government has become a curse,” he wrote in the Nottingham Journal in 1883. One prominent voice in this movement was Charles Bell Taylor, a wealthy ophthalmic surgeon from Nottingham. The names have an ornate 19th-century quality, but their point of view is recognizable to anyone following the current anti-quarantine protests. Widespread rumors claimed that these patients would be killed and their bodies dissected for medical research.Ī variety of civic groups formed, such as the Vigilance Association for the Defence of Personal Rights and the Anti-Compulsion Society. The petition described isolation in the hospital as a "prison deprives us of our right to nurse our sick and claim our dead." Sometimes resistance to such measures became violent: During a cholera epidemic in 1832, riots broke out in Liverpool and other English cities when people rebelled against doctors’ attempts to move patients from their homes to hospitals. For instance, in 1890,16,000 people in Nottingham signed a petition against mandatory hospitalization for those sick with infectious diseases. This idea provided more evidence for the measures advocated by the reformers.īut, just as today, a significant minority strongly resisted, arguing that these measures impinged on their freedom. ![]() Scientists such as Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease, which showed that infectious illness was caused by microbes passed from person to person. Over decades, a group of pioneering scientists, doctors, and government officials realized that isolation, disinfection, contact tracing, and other now-familiar public-health strategies had the potential to decrease the spread of many diseases. For much of the century, the leading theory was that they were triggered by “miasma,” mysterious vapors from rotting vegetation and organic matter. Vaccination was available for just one disease, smallpox testing didn’t exist, nor did many effective treatments other than rest and hydration and doctors had little understanding of what caused these diseases. Epidemics were common, and doctors could do almost nothing to stop them. In the 19th century, public-health officials weren’t facing just one infectious disease, but many: scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, tuberculosis, and smallpox, which together killed tens of thousands every year. Their approach could provide a powerful blueprint for how to effectively counter the “my body, my choice” anti-quarantine arguments of today. The United States was founded on the idea that individual liberty-for white men, at the time-is inviolable, and for many of its residents this argument resonates deeply.īut there is more than one way to understand freedom-something public-health reformers in England 150 years ago found made all the difference. They argue that quarantine and government-mandated closures infringe on their individual rights to do as they please, to make their own choices about health risks. ![]() Many of the people pushing to reopen see the issue in terms of freedom. Most public-health experts say it is too soon, and that easing restrictions will lead to a spike in transmissions. Florida, Wisconsin, and many other states are moving to reopen. Despite this, across the country there is an increasing push to ease social-distancing restrictions. More than 1.5 million have been infected, and every day another 25,000 or so test positive. ![]() So far, COVID-19 has killed more than 90,000 Americans-at least that's the official count. An 1875 cartoon of a family enjoying time outside while smallpox and fever lurk behind them (The Cartoon Collector / Print Collector / Getty) ![]()
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