antiseptic principle developed by English surgeon Joseph Lister, it was the idea that a chemical disinfectant applied to a wound dressing would destroy aerial bacteria. (p. 792)






Benthamite follower of the radical philosopher Jeremy Benthamite who taught that public problems should be dealt with on a rational, scientific basis and according to the "greatest good for the greatest number." (p. 791)






defense mechanisms Freud’s postulation that much of human behavior is motivated by unconscious emotional needs whose nature and origins are kept from conscious awareness by various mental devices. (p. 812)






evolution the idea, applied by thinkers in many fields, that stresses gradual change and continuous adjustment. (p. 815)






germ theory the idea, contrary to miasmatic theory, that disease was spread through filth and not caused by it. (p. 791)






illegitimacy explosion period between 1750 and 1850 marked by a high number of illegitimate births - by the 1840s, as many as one birth in three was occurring outside of wedlock in many large cities. (p. 805)






labor aristocracy highly skilled workers who made up about 15% of the working classes at the turn of the 20th Century. (p. 799)






miasmatic theory the belief that people contract disease when they breathe the bad odors of decay and putrefying excrement. (p. 791)






organic chemistry the study of the compounds of carbon. (p. 813)






pasteurization process developed by Louis Pasteur that suppressed the activity of living organisms in a beverage by heating it. (p. 791)

positivist method Auguste Compte’s discipline of sociology, which postulated that "each branch of our knowledge passes successively through three different theoretical conditions; the Theological, or ficticious; the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive." (p. 813)






realism literary movement which stressed that literature should depict life exactly as it was. (p. 815)






separate spheres a rigid gender division of labor with the wife as mother and homemaker and the husband as wage earner. (p. 807)

Social Darwinists group of thinkers popular with the upper middle class who saw the human race as driven forward to ever-greater specialization and progress by the unending economic struggle which would determine "the survival of the fittest." (p. 815)






thermodynamics a branch of physics built on Newton’s laws of mechanics that investigated the relationship between heat and mechanical energy. (p. 812)