Industrialization and the construction of health risks in German workers' autobiographies from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Industrialization brought about quick changes for workers both in the workplace and in their wider socioeconomic and political environment. Therefore they preserved traditional beliefs and attitudes toward their milieu. With regard to health and illness, these traditional beliefs, drawn from their autobiographies, are illustrated. With time, panel doctors became accepted by workers. Social insurance gave workers access to physicians. Workers did not simply or tacitly accept their medicalization, nor did they oppose the extension of the social power of physicians. They construed health risks as part of their milieu, and not as the result of social changes taking place in all spheres.