Scientific medicine and public health in nineteenth-century Latin America

ABSTRACT

The authors studied medicine and public health in the nineteenth century. As happened in other areas, during the century, medicine underwent deep conceptual and technical transformations. With frequent references to, for example, Bogotá, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires, the authors describe the processes by which medicine was "modernized" and point out the role local context played in shaping theoretical and practical medicine capable of responding to public-health needs. (AU)