"Foucault’s notion of biopower turns upside down the misplaced question concerning the origins of “environmental awareness.” On the one hand, it emphasizes that the politicization of the environment has a long history, drawing some of its roots from biopolitics, from the joint management of environments and population health; on the other hand, it draws historical attention to the imposition of technology and the curbing of its critics. Three examples of modern disinhibitions at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries are studied: the shift of medical etiologies from environmental factors to social ones, the application of risk to the management of life, and the definition of the term vaccine after 1800."