Fresh air and good food: Children and the anti-tuberculosis campaign in the Netherlands c.1900-1940

As elsewhere in the Western world, between 1900 and 1940 the anti-tuberculosis campaign in the Netherlands produced a wide range of initiatives to promote child health. In each of these the social and the medical were linked, as the hygienic 'mood' was encouraged by a child-saving ethos that focused upon the poor. In this article the author discusses the choices that were made between anti-tuberculosis interventions for children, the benefits projected on each of these and the categories of children for whom they were meant. Private and voluntary initiatives dominated the field, whereas the state turned out to be very reluctant to take responsibility. Medically controlled health camps for 'weak' children were a more important instrument than open-air schools and mass medical examination. Medical surveillance produced new categories and data which in turn justified the continued growth of child hygiene after tuberculosis had become less of a threat during the 1930s.