Earthquakes, Parks and Public Health – Cleo Nursing

Lessons from the Earth: Earthquakes, parks, and public health

At approximately 9:40 a.m., on Saturday, November 1, 1755, the ground in Lisbon shook. The magnitude of the earthquake was likely to be 8.5 on the Richter scale, and it was felt from North Africa to Finland. Eyewitness accounts describe the chaos caused by collapsed construction, killing and maiming thousands in their homes and on the streets of Lisbon's crowded city center and waterfront neighbourhoods. Dozens of candlelit churches, crowded with Catholic worshipers celebrating All Saints' Day, caught fire, and many burned to death as they prayed.

In the hour between the main shock and the violent aftershock, the Tagus River mysteriously receded. Those along the coast of Lisbon described the tsunami as “the sea was surging and was sure to overwhelm the city.”[1]One observer said, “This phenomenon is amazing.” […] “It seemed to me even more shocking than the earthquake operations themselves.” And around him were “gatherings of crowds, priests and monks, all of them[ll] On their knees kissing the ground.” It was noon. The building fires were nearly under control. With the help of “piercing winds” and some “incendiary materials,” the fires had been burning for several days.[2]

The history of the Lisbon earthquake, retold many times, is one of catastrophic natural devastation, as earth, water and fire conspired to destroy a teeming European city that had grown over two and a half centuries of Portuguese colonial expansion. In addition to significant infrastructure losses, it is estimated that 10% of Lisbon's population died in the earthquake. An English merchant estimated that the population of the Portuguese capital at that time was about 350,000. The total death toll remains uncertain, but there were likely between 30,000 and 60,000 victims – deaths so numerous, that Lisbon turned the river into a mass grave to quickly reduce the risk of decay and epidemic disease. Public health deteriorated further in the following days, with “large women giving birth to children[ing] In the open fields amid groans and screams […an] Countless poor broken people.

Upon examining the “horrific” wreck, that English merchant saw it as a sign of divine punishment, saying: “I believe such complete devastation has never occurred anywhere on the face of the earth since the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.”[3] The Protestant writer Francisco[4]

“Destroying Lisbon.” French engraving, c. 1755. (Torre do Tombo National Archives.)

One hundred and fifty years later, as San Francisco—a city with a climate, topography, and coastal location similar to Lisbon—suffered a great earthquake and fire, scenes of natural disaster returned with the return of divine judgment. On April 18, 1906, explorer Newton Chittenden wondered whether the disaster he had just witnessed had resulted from “the direct intervention of an offended God” against the “criminal elements” and “anarchic forces” who ruled San Francisco with “almost unbelievable stupidity.” Chittenden's Hope[d] “Enthusiastically” that the California city had been able to “be rebuilt, not only on a new permanent foundation of improved physical structures, but especially on a higher moral standard.”[5]

These testimonies from Lisbon and San Francisco are what historian Deborah Quinn calls “felt reports”: first-person accounts recorded by ordinary bystanders who lived telling tales of natural disasters and subsequent disaster relief.[6] Felt's reports show that natural disasters disrupt an enduring understanding of the Earth as a fertile ecosystem subordinate to human needs, whose structural elements—soil, land, sunlight, water, and tides—must be tamed to achieve effective stability that serves human progress.[7]

However, natural disasters can also encourage societies to reevaluate human relationships with the natural world. The Lisbon earthquake, with its serious challenge to human life, has opened the way for the inclusion of plant life as part of public health in the reconstructed urban space.

The scientific understanding that plant life – in the form of trees, shrubs and flowers – provides fresh oxygen to residents and an antidote to the unhealthy drawbacks of urban life, fueled the proliferation of public green spaces in post-earthquake Lisbon. Contributors to the Portuguese Journal of Horticulture advocated “tree planting [in Lisbon] It is important not only because of urban beautification, which should not be ignored because it does a lot to lift our morale, but also because it increases the luxury of the capital, which unfortunately is one of the least healthy cities in Europe.[8] In defense of urban afforestation, a municipal employee declared, “Trees play an important role in the cleanliness of the city, because they are a powerful sanitation agent.”[9]

Public health and well-being concerns thus guided urban green space planning in the aftermath of the earthquake. Royal leaders, architects and engineers saw the disaster as an opportunity to establish an enlightened arboreal capital. Under the leadership of the Marquis of Pombal, the rehabilitation of Lisbon included the creation of the first Portuguese botanical garden (Agoda 1768) and the Paseo Publico (Public Park), a wooded boulevard north of the area badly damaged by the earthquake, fenced and designated for pedestrians. Passeio Público was the first of its kind in Europe. Unlike London and Paris, which began their municipal parks as royal properties that were later opened to the masses, Lisbon's Paseo was designed as a public work from its construction in 1764 until its modification on Avenida da Liberdade a hundred years later.

Lisbon's reconstruction process, spanning more than a century, offers insight into early trial-and-error efforts to “green” urban spaces. For example, entry to the Passeio was paid, prompting criticism that access to “the light of progress” was being “selfishly and unwisely” given to the wealthy but denied to “the workers, those most in need of such a resource.”[10] Likewise, many of the municipal parks and gardens constructed after the earthquake did not come to fruition until the mid-19th and 20th centuries. Lack of resources, the weakness of the Portuguese colonial empire, and persistent political instability delayed its implementation.

Leonel Márquez Pereira, “View of Paseo Publico.” (Oil on canvas, 1856.)

The Jardim da Estrela in Lisbon – created only because the earthquake destroyed the Nossa Senhora da Estrela monastery that occupied the land – was a particular success. Jardim da Estrela opened its doors in 1852 and remains a vibrant community site to this day, embodying the marriage of urban plant life and public health advocacy that emerged after the earthquake.

Free to all, the picturesque park offered trees bearing signs from across the empire, greenhouses that could be visited, a wrought-iron bandstand for public entertainment, and the country's first kindergarten, modeled on Friedrich Froebel's theories of child development. The German teacher said young children benefit from experiential learning in the natural world. Horticultural activities are located in the Jardim Kindergarten, alongside the standard curriculum, where the gardeners act as teachers. In 1882, Jardim da Estrela became a local place of vaccination, spatially marrying plant life with human health through the concept of preventive care: vaccination strengthened the human immune system against viral infections, while public gardens invigorated the taxed urban body through plant immersion and physical exercise.

Women and children at Froebel's school, Jardim da Estrela. (Unknown photographer, circa 1900s.)

The emphasis on public hygiene that led to the proliferation of arboreal public spaces and plant greenhouses in post-earthquake Lisbon cannot be separated from the curiosity for visual spectacle and colonial exoticism. To this day, palm trees adorn public parks, cemeteries and gardens in Lisbon. Monocots, tropical angiosperms, do not have secondary woody growth, which means they are structurally unsuitable for construction. The large number of palm trees in Lisbon's current landscape, characterized by their permanent decoration, indicates the extent to which urban plans for tree planting deviated from the utilitarian project as the nineteenth century progressed. The tall, sparsely leafed palm trees didn't provide walkers with much oxygen or shade either. But as commercial postcards of the period show, it provided an interesting beauty and an educational scene for Lisbon's residents and itinerant visitors, aspects that became crucial in promoting general welfare on a national level. As the famous Portuguese proverb emphasizes, “The eye also eats,” meaning that sight can be as nourishing as food.

At their core, natural disasters reveal the anthropocentric drive to manipulate the Earth for human benefit: parks and gardens grew from the ruins of the Lisbon disaster to purify urban air and promote public health. In San Francisco, earthquake survivors used the shaking ground to protect their beloved heirloom. When a brutal fire followed the main shock, “Lenore and Albert buried the painting that Helena Blackwell had done of her in the back yard,” a letter writer told his family on April 22, 1906. “The day after the fire they dug it up and it was perfect.” However, the off-ground property was not: “Glassware [sic] “It was all melted, and the pottery was cracked and broken.”[11]

The duality of the Earth as a planetary structure of shelter and destroyer ultimately shapes human responses to natural disasters: from California's own reports or government rehabilitation projects, such as the one that transformed post-earthquake Lisbon into a germinal “green city.” On the one hand, these examples show that natural disasters, across time and space, can prompt a reassessment of the relationship between human health and the environment. On the other hand, responses to these impactful Western earthquakes help chronicle current human views that advocate exploitation of the planet as a volatile but versatile resource: from toxic “petromasculinity” to authoritarian regimes that treat the Earth as a feminized ecosystem that needs to be “tamed” through the plunder of fossil fuels;[12] And to the deceptive “green extractivism” practiced by monopolistic companies that, through their extraction of rare earth elements and minerals, lead to environmental depletion and public diseases under the guise of transitioning to clean energy.[13]

Notes Report on the Terrible Earthquake and Fire that Devastated the City of Lisbon (London: J. Paine, 1755), 12. ↑ Account, 13, 15. ↑ Account, 21-22. ^ Francisco Xavier de Oliveira, A Piteous Discourse on the Present Disasters Occurring in Portugal (1756), 53. All Portuguese translations are my own. ^ Newton H. Chittenden. Personal papers. New York Public Library, Rare Book Collection, New York City. ^ Deborah Quinn, Earthquake Monitors: Disaster Science from Lisbon to Richter (University of Chicago Press, 2012). ^ The Lisbon earthquake would become pivotal in Western reevaluations of industrialization, civilization, science, theology, and disaster preparedness. It was discussed by Kant, Voltaire, and other prominent European figures. ↑ Portuguese Horticultural Journal, 1873, 60. ↑ Eduardo Sequeira, Portuguese Horticultural Journal, 1889, 42. ↑ Duarte Oliveira Junior, Portuguese Horticultural Journal, 1872, 33-34. ^ Edmund [no last name]. California papers. American Archaeological Society, Worcester MA. ↑ Kara Daggett, “Petromasculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 47.1 (2018): 25-44. ^ Eric Post and Philippe Le Billon, “The Green War: Geopolitical Metabolism and Green Extraction,” Geopolitics 30.2 (2024): 760-800. ↑

Photo caption: Jardim da Estrela, December 20, 1905. (Personal postcard, courtesy of the author)

Diana W. Anselmo's work focuses on the reception of queer films in the Progressive Era and affective labor in American media history. She is currently working on the Portuguese history of lithium, thermal waters, and public health in the long nineteenth century, as well as the history of fire and early film exhibitions in Europe and the United States. She is currently Cleo's Nursing Writer in Residence.

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