The 1879-1898 beriberi controversy between the later Nobel prize laureate Christiaan Eijkman and his opponent, quarrel monger Evart van Dieren is a little known but highly amusing footnote to the history of the discovery of Vitamin-B. This paper examines the dynamics in this controversy with the aid of published as well as unpublished documents. The emphasis in this paper is on the attempts from within the medical field to exclude outsider Van Dieren. The fact that this attempt was unsuccessful may be counted as success for Van Dieren who was otherwise a complete failure. In the conclusion of this paper, this success is explained in term of two illusions: that of the perfect and of the ideal community.

This article approaches the hygienist movement as a social health movement, a complex societal campaign aiming to alter norms and arrangements regarding hygiene and thereby improve public health. This perspective is applied to a very specific topic: drinking water arrangements in the city of Utrecht (1866-1900). Archival study indicates that not only medical doctors contributed to the functioning of the hygienist movement, as is often assumed, but also ‘regular’ citizens, for example by providing the movement with money, information and services. By showing this, the article enhances our understanding of citizens’ relations with local public health arrangements in the nineteenth century.

In september 2005 nam Mieke Grypdonck afscheid als hoogleraar bij de disciplinegroep Verplegingswetenschap van het Universitair Medisch Centrum (UMC) Utrecht, waarbij ze vanaf de oprichting in 1990 nauw betrokken was. Dit Liber Amicorum is bedoeld om haar te bedanken voor haar niet-aflatende inzet voor de verpleegkunde en de verplegingswetenschap. Deze bundel artikelen is samengesteld door de disciplinegroep Verplegingswetenschap en het Landelijk Expertisecentrum Verpleging & Verzorging (LEVV). De schrijvers werkten allen, in diverse hoedanigheden, met haar samen.