Miasmas, microbios y conventillos

[Therapeutic remedies and medical propaganda on influenza in Mexico in 1918: ideas and knowledge sets]

This article explores medical thought on the impact of the influenza pandemic of 1918 in Mexico. It analyzes scientific ideas on the etiology of the flu, as reflected in the types of remedies and medical prescriptions published in the press and in health bulletins. It then goes deeper into the topic by examining the international historic context, dominated by the war. In Mexico, years of armed conflict unleashed by the Revolution exacerbated living conditions among the population: starvation, typhus, smallpox and other infectious diseases were present before and during the outbreak of the pandemic. This study is based on archival documentation, health bulletins, press sources from the period, and modern bibliography.

[Territory, places, and health: resizing spatiality in public health]

The aim of this study is to extend the reading of the health-disease process from the territorial perspective. Theoretical production on the link between health and the environment should go beyond medical typologies and their emphasis on the distribution of environmental risks (physical, biological, and chemical) to acknowledge the social and subjective production of territories. In order to make progress with this theoretical production, public health should draw on the integration of concepts from the social sciences such as the appropriation of space, territory-territorialities, and places. In terms of scale, it should also focus on micro-territories, since the scenario of local territories and places of daily living are where lifestyles, illness, and the construction of health materialize.

[Epidemics and medical conundrums: Uruguay, 1918-1919]

This article seeks to establish the type of connection that existed between the responses implemented by the Uruguayan state and dominant medical knowledge in the form of health policies during the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919. The problem can be split into two aspects: What were the most salient lines of medical thought on confronting the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919? And how was medical knowledge linked to the actions undertaken by the Uruguayan state? Answers will be sought through an indicial inquiry for two reasons. Firstly, the sources consulted present a very high degree of dispersion and heterogeneity and secondly, the writer is in an exploratory phase of the problem.