History of Public Health

As Políticas Sociais em Portugal (1910-1926)

by David Pereira

Resumo
Abstract
Trabalho de Projecto
Project Work Title
As Políticas Sociais em Portugal... more Resumo
Abstract
Trabalho de Projecto
Project Work Title
As Políticas Sociais em Portugal (1910-1926)
David Oliveira Ricardo Pereira

PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Portugal, I República, políticas sociais.
KEYWORDS: Portugal, First Republic, social politics.

Tendo em conta o âmbito do trabalho que nos propomos realizar, procuraremos contribuir para uma visão global acerca das políticas desenvolvidas pelos poderes públicos em matéria social no período considerado: o trabalho; os seguros sociais obrigatórios; a assistência; a saúde; a habitação. Assim, perspectivamos poder determinar vários aspectos caracterizadores dessas mesmas políticas, desde a sua concepção e modelo teórico, passando pelas influências exógenas que essa mesma política possa ter incorporado, para além da sua construção legislativa e da sua aplicação final, não esquecendo o seu alcance e sucesso. É nosso propósito contribuir para um olhar reflexivo sobre os anos da I República Portuguesa (1910-1926) conhecendo as suas políticas sociais, o que no limite pode igualmente garantir uma melhor compreensão deste regime também em termos da sua avaliação global. Por outro lado, centrando igualmente a sua situação cronológica e estrutural em termos económicos e sociais, cremos ser possível aquilatar até que ponto se diferenciaram os propósitos prévios à realização das políticas, a sua aplicação e a apreciação final acerca do seu sucesso ou malogro. Só colocando em análise todos estes factores sobre uma perspectiva ampla poderemos obter as explicações adequadas ao questionamento desse período em Portugal na matéria em questão.

This research aims to study the State social policies during the period. The fields under study include, for that period, the public politics concerning: the labour laws; the first legislation about the obligatory social insurance; the public assistance; the health; the housing. Our aim is to know the different phases of that politics with its conception in theory, the foreign influences which came to the country in that field, the legislative framework, the general approval and its results and evaluation. On the other hand, our research is also framed by the economical and social structural period in which the Portuguese First Republic (1910-1926) is inserted. Through the particular study of the social politics promoted by the State, we want to obtain a general appraisal considering the Portuguese First Republic regime as a whole. By having also in mind the economical and social structure and chronology, we think that it is possible to evaluate the potential differences between the intentions before the approval of those politics, its application and its final judgement according its success or failure. Only by putting in to analysis all these factors on a wide perspective we can obtain the adequate explanations to questioning this period in Portugal in this issue.

The Civil Hospitals of Lisbon: the launch of the first urban health coordinating body in Portugal (1913-1927)

by David Pereira

Abstract Proposal for Paper at

40 Years Society for the Social History of Medicine – Annual Conference... more Abstract Proposal for Paper at

40 Years Society for the Social History of Medicine – Annual Conference 2010

Knowledge, Ethics and Representations of Medicine and Health: Historical
Perspectives

8-11 July 2010, Durham and Newcastle, UK

Organised by the Northern Centre for the History of Medicine

Sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, London, and the Society for the Social History of
Medicine


The Civil Hospitals of Lisbon: the launch of the first urban health coordinating body in Portugal (1913-1927)

To define the origins of the social politics concerning the health in Portugal, the Civil Hospitals of Lisbon (Hospitais Civis de Lisboa) acquired a real importance in the first reforms taken among the health in the country. Starting to implement several measures after the political change which came with the declaration of the Republic in 1910, the governments interfered with the regulation and organization of the health units of the country’s capital. With this, the State defined for the first time a coordinating body which, as a matter of fact, continued some of the structure that pre-existed in the Monarchy with the direction of the São José Royal Hospital and Outbuildings (Hospital Real de São José e Anexos) assured by the hospital matron (enfermeiro-mor) with a informal connexion with the directors of its several units. The structure maintained this scheme for almost three years – with the loss of the title Royal for obvious reasons – when the government decided to create an autonomous management for the medical assistance, administration and accountancy in the new Civil Hospitals of Lisbon, giving the responsibility of the direction in terms of medical, hygiene and pharmacy procedures to a Medical Commission (September 9, 1913), soon changed into a Directive Commission (November 27, 1914) with the directors of the health units. Its major competences were the definition of the internal regulations conserving its autonomy, the transfer of the amounts of the State budget and the vote of the annual budgets and the approval of annual amounts for the Hospitals` management. It was the first major health directive body in Portugal which was a privileged spot of the definitions of the health politics in that period.

Sauvons les Bébés: Child Health and U.S. Humanitarian Aid in the First World War Era

by Julia Irwin

Bulletin of the History of Medicine (2012)

From 1917 to 1923, the American Red Cross organized an array of long-term child health projects in Europe as part of... more From 1917 to 1923, the American Red Cross organized an array of long-term child health projects in Europe as part of its larger wartime and post-war humanitarian efforts. Across the continent, the organization established child health clinics, better baby shows, playgrounds, fresh air camps, and courses for women on infant and child hygiene. Hundreds of U.S. doctors, nurses, and other child welfare professionals traveled to Europe to administer these programs. These activities call attention to American efforts to reform the health of European youth and, in so doing, to reshape European medicine and European society more broadly. Moreover, they suggest the importance of child-centered medical relief—and the history of medicine more broadly—to the history of U.S. foreign relations.

"The Body, Public Health and Social Control in Sixteenth-Century Venice"

by Michelle Laughran

Doctoral Dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1998

Through a blend of political-institutional, medical, and socio-cultural history, this dissertation demonstrates dig... more Through a blend of political-institutional, medical, and socio-cultural history, this dissertation demonstrates dig the rapid development of sixteenth-century Venice's public health policy marks not only "the medical renaissance of the sixteenth century," but highlights an important development in the history of mentalities as well. Using a wide range of archival and published sources, I argue that when the pre-modern cultural universe--epitomized by a unified, anthropomorphic body--was under siege during the 1500s by a divided Christendom and warring inchoate nation-states, one prescription for Venice in the throes of a major European-wide "paradigm shift" was to invoke this metaphor of the body (in all of its manifestations: whether as a medical body, a body social, a body politic, etc.), and entrust the continued welfare of this ailing embodiment to its newly created health magistracy, the Provveditori alla Sanità . Since the Venetian patriciate at the time was preoccupied with public exhibitions and ritual assurances of order within the body social and hierarchy within the body politic, the broader social and cultural implications of early modern epidemiology encouraged a rapid multiplication of the magistracy's powers during the sixteenth century. Those who were perceived as a threat to this order were--as a result of the overlapping metaphors of the body in the early modern worldview--frequently understood to be sources of contagion and/or diseases like the plague who were dangerous to the medical body as well. At the same time, the increasing separation between elite and popular cultures reinforced these associations: physicians--engaged in their own processes of "self-fashioning"--would theorize that the poor possessed a physiologically different body which was inherently predisposed to epidemic disease. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Venetian Magistracy's public health authority would thus extend beyond disease control and sanitation to include the regulation of marginalized groups such as the poor, prostitutes, and popular healers. My dissertation consequently traces the processes by which contemporary visions of the body, health and disease were informed and transformed by the Sanità 's particular reactions to the perceived crises in sixteenth-century Venice.

"Regulating Bodies: Public Health and Social Control in Sixteenth-Century Venice"

by Michelle Laughran

Presented at "The Body in Early Modern Italy" Conference, Johns Hopkins University, October 2002

La profilaxis del viento

by Ernesto Bohoslavsky

« Le principe de précaution : de l’environnement à la santé »

by Claude-Olivier Doron

Published in Cahiers du Centre Georges Canguilhem, n°3, La santé face au principe de précaution, dir. Dominique Lecourt, PUF, Paris, 2009

In this article, we stress first that the precautionary principle has to be understood as an element inside a broader... more In this article, we stress first that the precautionary principle has to be understood as an element inside a broader rationality of government of which we describe various peculiarities, and that has been applied in particular to the government of nature. Then we study various problems caused by the way this rationality works inside the field of human health, first in clinical medicine, then in public health. We argue in particular that precaution tends to give a support for a will of protection which is difficult to limit inside the system of public health and pleads for an overthrow of the regime of truth on which public health has long been organised. We show eventually how it participates in the deployment of an apparatus to manage emergent threats in the field of human health that transforms deeply the way uncertainty is “politically” governed and is deeply ambivalent.

Nutrition, hygiene, and mortality. Setting parameters for Roman health and life expectancy consistent with our comparative evidence

by Geoffrey Kron

In E. Lo Cascio (a cura di), L’impatto della “peste antonina,” (Collana di Pragmateiai) (Bari: Edipuglia) (in press)

Any hypotheses regarding the likely long-term demographic impact of the Antonine plague will have to take into... more Any hypotheses regarding the likely long-term demographic impact of the Antonine plague will have to take into account, not only the cause of the epidemic, but also the underlying mortality and fertility regime of the Roman empire. Health, nutritional status and hygiene have a significant effect upon the virulence of some epidemics, while for others, like the bubonic plague, for example, they are largely irrelevant. But whatever the effect on the morbidity of the epidemic, the underlying mortality regime of the population will have a significant impact on determining both the extent to which the population will be able to absorb this excess mortality, and the extent to which it will or will not recover.

At least since the influential work of Keith Hopkins in the 1960’s, a broad consensus has emerged among ancient historians setting the life expectancy at birth in the Roman Principate and Empire at between 20 and 30 years of age, with most estimates falling on the lower end of this range, often below 25 years. As the trenchant critiques of Tim Parkin and Walter Scheidel have emphasized, however, solid evidence for the calculation of ancient life expectancy simply does not exist. Recent estimates must therefore remain largely educated guesses based on comparative evidence from early-industrial Europe or the contemporary Third World. I intend to argue that at least three strong considerations suggest that the present scholarly consensus is unrealistically low. .

First, a more careful reading of the modern demographic evidence will show that the life expectancies as low as those conjectured for Roman Italy are rarely documented for Western European societies, generally only in brief periods of extreme poverty and stress, or for limited segments of society.

Second, researchers of ancient demography have generally neglected the critical role of nutrition in the modern rise in life expectancy, as argued in a classic, if controversial, work by Thomas MacKeown, and confirmed by the correlation between the secular increase in heights and decline in mortality in modern Europe and North America drawn by Robert Fogel. In fact, anthropometric evidence of ancient heights suggests that Greco-Roman societies enjoyed a significantly higher biological standard of living than the working classes of 18th and 19th century Western Europe. Early industrial life expectancies are therefore likely to represent a floor, rather than a ceiling, for plausible Greco-Roman estimates.

Finally, there is evidence that, in addition to enjoying superior nutritional standards, Greco-Roman populations likely faced fewer health stresses from contaminated drinking water, over-crowding, poor hygiene and sanitation, lack of exercise, and social inequality generally than the poor of the European ancien régime.

La profilaxis del viento. Instituciones represivas y sanitarias en la Patagonia argentina, 1880-1940

by Ernesto Bohoslavsky

An Iconography of Contagion: 20th Century Health Posters

by Michael Sappol

Catalog for a small exhibition of 20th-century health posters. Originally displayed at the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Washington, DC, 2008

A malária em foto: imagens de campanhas e açöes no Brasil da primeira metade do século XX; Malaria in pictures: images from Brazils Public Health campaigns in …

by Gilberto Hochman

O artigo apresenta e discute um conjunto de fotografias sobre as ações, técnicas, práticas e campanhas contra a... more O artigo apresenta e discute um conjunto de fotografias sobre as ações, técnicas, práticas e campanhas contra a malária em três arquivos pertencentes ao acervo da Casa de Oswaldo Cruz/Fundação Oswaldo Cruz que são exemplares de momentos cruciais e distintos da história da luta contra a malária no Brasil do período de 1918 a 1956: Arquivo Belisário Penna, Arquivo Fundação Rockefeller (série Serviço de Malária do Nordeste) e Arquivo Rostan Soares. Relaciona os registros fotográficos sobre a malária com os contextos histórico-sanitários específicos e os modelos e estratégias de campanhas representados por cada um dos arquivos e sugere relações com a própria história do meio fotográfico no século XX. Considera que as imagens da malária constituem fontes privilegiadas para a construção de uma história visual da doença no país ao longo do século XX e da história da saúde pública no Brasil

Die Grippeepidemie 1918 hinter der italienisch-österreichischen Front. Das Land Salzburg und die Provinz Modena zwischen Waffenstillstand und ärztlicher Not (Version Virus Nr. 10)

by Felicita Ratti

My contribution to the 2010 conference in Dornbirn, re-edited for publication on "Virus Nr. 10 in the project presentations section( "Projektvorstellungen")

Translation of the title: "The 1918 flu epidemic behind the Italian-Austrian front. The Land Salzburg and the... more Translation of the title: "The 1918 flu epidemic behind the Italian-Austrian front. The Land Salzburg and the Province of Modena between armistice and medical emergency"./"L´epidemia di influenza del 1918 nelle retrovie del fronte italo-austriaco. Il Land Salisburgo e la Provincia di Modena tra armistizio ed emergenza sanitaria".
Text of my talk in Dornbirn 2010 (re-edited and summarized).For the complete study, see the chapter in "Una regione ospedale".

Book Review and Critique _ Egypt's Other Wars, book by By Nancy Elizabeth Gallagher

by Shereen Nasef

Public health spaces and the fabrication of identity

by David Armstrong

Embodiment and ethics: constructing medicine’s two bodies

by David Armstrong

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness: A Proverbial Rallying Cry Turned Cultural Defense

by Anthony Buccitelli

Proverbium: An International Yearbook of Proverb Scholarship 25 (2008): 23-46

Illness under the purview of the colonial state: Demographic inscription of tuberculosis and control efforts in the early American Philippines, 1899-1910

by Aaron Rom Moralina

Published in Philippine Population Review volume 9, no. 1, 2010

State, Society, and Sickness: Tuberculosis Control in the American Philippines, 1910-1918

by Aaron Rom Moralina

Published in Philippine Studies volume 57, no. 2, 2009

Die Grippeepidemie 1918 hinter der italienisch-österreichischen Front. Das Land Salzburg und Die Provinz Modena zwischen Waffenstillstand und ärztlicher Not.

by Felicita Ratti

Conference paper about a comparative history of Spanish Flu

A comparative local study about the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919, considering two mainly agricultural... more A comparative local study about the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919, considering two mainly agricultural provinces behind the Italian-Austrian front. Here is the conference paper I presented at the Annual conference of the Austrian Association for Social history of medicine (therefore in German).
The experience of fighting the pandemic in Austria-Hungary and Italy left deep marks in European/national medicine and health care systems. I analysed two cases which showed similarities in social and geographical assets and illustrated some arguments about the social history of World War and of the pandemic, often using Modena and Salzburg as Synecdoche. My complete case study was published in my book "Una regione ospedale" and will be quoted and  further analysed in my Ph.D. dissertation.

A gripe espanhola na Bahia de Todos os Santos: entre os ritos da ciência e os da fé.

by Christiane Souza

Dynamis (Granada), v. 30, p. 41-63, 2010.

This article aims to analyze the population responses to the influenza epidemic that struck Salvador, capital of Bahia... more This article aims to analyze the population responses to the influenza epidemic that struck Salvador, capital of Bahia state, Brazil, in early September 1918. Within this perspective, we intend to discuss the measures taken by health authorities, the defensive actions of ordinary people and practices based on religion, to confront a disease hitherto considered benign and seasonal, which appeared in an unusual time of year and virulently surprising. For this, use it as privileged sources newspapers published in Salvador during incidence of the influenza epidemic.