num_pages: 194
description: Among Jews in Eastern Europe the parting greeting was not the meaningless 'cheerio' etc. but zei gezunt (be well). The wish and its fulfillment were often far apart. It was said that in matters of health, experts went to Glasgow to be shocked. They were rarely disappointed.There were many health problems in Victorian Glasgow. Infectious diseases were common amid slum conditions and poverty. The expanding city drew immigrants from all over Scotland, from Ireland and from Continental Europe. This book looks at the response of the Jewish community in Glasgow to its health problems and the complex community-based welfare infrastructure it created. There was an emphasis on self-help and enabling the immigrants to become financially independent.The book shows how trachoma came to be perceived as an immigrant disease and how it was used as an issue in the attempt to control Jewish immigration. It also examines the competition for bodies and souls between Jewish and Christian missionary welfare bodies in the Gorbals. It looks at the experience of Jewish patients in the psychiatric hospitals, using contemporary case records to illustrate attitudes to mental illness and to the Jewish immigrants. It also shows the first moves by the immigrant Jews themselves to take advantage of the educational opportunities in Glasgow and become doctors themselves.By concentrating on one Jewish community and looking at all aspects of its health and welfare, the author builds up a picture of all the complex health and welfare issues at play in Glasgow, a great Victorian industrial society with its own social and medical problems.
language: English
title: Be Well!: Jewish Immigrant Health and Welfare in Glasgow, 1860–1914
titlecomplete: Be Well!: Jewish Immigrant Health and Welfare in Glasgow, 1860–1914
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Birlinn Ltd