Gesnerus
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Historical Article
[[History of Community Health in Africa. The Swiss Medical Missionaries' Endeavour in South Africa].
It was not Dutch settlers nor British colonizers who introduced public and community health practice in north-eastern South Africa but medical doctors of the Swiss mission in southern Africa. While the history of medical knowledge transfer into 19th-20th century Africa emphasises colonial powers, this paper shows how countries without colonies contributed to expand western medical cultures, including public health. ⋯ Elim hospital's physicians moved back boundaries of segregationist policies, and sometime gave the impression of being involved in the political struggle against Apartheid. Thus, Swiss public health activities could later be seen as sorts of seeds that were planted and would partly reappear in 1994 with the ANC-projected national health policy.
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Biography Historical Article
[The "shoeleather epidemiology" or the reinvention of medical survey. Alice Hamilton and industrial medicine in early 20th century America].
Dr. Alice Hamilton (1869-1970) was a pioneer in industrial medicine, a new discipline that emerged with a new interest in working conditions and occupational hazards within an era of unprecedented industrial growth. ⋯ She went to the source of information in workshops, plants and construction sites, observed the very concrete part of industrial work, interviewed many stakeholders in and around the workplace, making a methodological toolbox for industrial surveys. Her method combined an old medical practice (the medical inquiry) and a new clinical field (the plant) and placed the worker as a patient in the core of the issue of occupational health and safety.
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Biography Historical Article
[Short biography of an actor of the institutionalisation of orthopaedics (1830-1850)].
Parts of the socioscientific career of Jules Guérin, an orthopaedic surgeon, are presented in this article. The aim is to deepen the comprehension of intricate processes like specialisation and professionalisation of medicine and development of medical gymnastics. ⋯ For the analysis the author tries to associate historical elements taken from the medical field and the socioeconomic context, however, without digressing too far from Guérin himself. First, Guérin's part in the institutionalisation process will be studied, second, his influence as a surgeon and theorist of spinal deformities and then his role as a controversial figure in the medical field.
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Biography Historical Article
Beyond the normal and the pathological: recent literature on Georges Canguilhem.