人間機械論と公衆衛生の定義――革新主義期アメリカにおけるC.-E. A. ウィンズローと人間工学運動――

抄録

“Public Health is,” C.-E. A. Winslow defined in 1920, “the science and the art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical health and efficiency through organized community efforts.” In this definition, the term efficiency means vitality or vigor, on the meaning of which human engineering as a labor reform idea cast a deep shadow. Nevertheless, this fact has not been previously pointed out. Because the nature and meaning of human engineering changed entirely, the path to trace the relationship with the definition disappeared. This paper aims to rebuild this forgotten link and extend our understanding of the definition.

According to its originator, Dr. Winthrop Talbot, human engineering was a new profession applying science to improving labor conditions. He advised employers to organize a Department of Human Engineering to promote the efficiency of working people as the human machine, proper maintenance and repair being indispensable to bring out the original capability. He used the physiological terms as a marketing technique to express a cold-hearted attitude towards benevolence or philanthropy and make employers willingly purchase progressive labor policies. He received a definite meaning of efficiency, “the ratio of the useful result produced to the effort utilized in producing it.” Therefore, efficiency means a performance ratio of the human machine.

Winslow earnestly accepted Talbot’s idea and devoted himself to the human engineering movement because he had been interested in occupational disease and physical disorders due to “the faulty operation of the human machine.” He penned an article, “Fresh Air as a Speed Boss,” in a management-reform journal to rewrite Frederic W. Taylor’s concept of efficiency and alter the principles of scientific management. He insisted on the economies of installing ventilation facilities to increase the health and efficiency (vigor) of the human machine.

During World War I, Winslow’s vision became practical. The personnel management movement took place, and certain industrial corporations introduced intelligent measures to safeguard workers’ health. Furthermore, war machinery accepted the question of industrial over-fatigue as one of the corporations in-house and as the nation’s health.

In 1920, Winslow wrote down the definition of public health based on his experience and practices in the human engineering and personnel management movements. He formulated it in generic terms, but it was clear that he placed efficiency as the ratio of the vitality and vigor of the human machine to organized community efforts for improving the working environment.

Since the progressive period has gone away, the influence of human engineering on the definition has become invisible. A fatal change has occurred in human engineering and human machine meanings, once symbolizing labor policies of the excellent companies, now indicating totalitarianism and dictatorship. When we forgot the original connotations of these words, every route was closed to understanding the link between human engineering and the definition.