The Anti-Cancer League and public outreach for cancer control in Peru.

Peru's first cancer control public outreach scheme started in the 1910s, but ground to a standstill as it attained official governmental recognition in 1926 as the Liga Anti-Cancerosa (LAC). This paper explains the developments leading to that earliest effort to enlist a coalition of State health agencies, physicians, and lay people in a campaign to publicize early signs of this disease, as well as the medical and political reasons for and implications of its decline. Besides highlighting the importance of professional initiatives shaping cancer activism, contextualizing the rise and fall of the LAC calls attention to the effects that hospitalization of cancer treatment had on aspects of cancer care that were not directly treatment-related, such as public outreach.

The anti-cancer League and public outreach for cancer control in Peru / A liga Anticancerosa e a sensibilização pública ao controle do câncer na sociedade peruana

Abstract Peru's first cancer control public outreach scheme started in the 1910s, but ground to a standstill as it attained official governmental recognition in 1926 as the Liga Anti-Cancerosa (LAC). This paper explains the developments leading to that earliest effort to enlist a coalition of State health agencies, physicians, and lay people in a campaign to publicize early signs of this disease, as well as the medical and political reasons for and implications of its decline. Besides highlighting the importance of professional initiatives shaping cancer activism, contextualizing the rise and fall of the LAC calls attention to the effects that hospitalization of cancer treatment had on aspects of cancer care that were not directly treatment-related, such as public outreach.

Resumo O primeiro programa peruano de sensibilização pública para controle do câncer iniciou na década de 1910, mas arrefeceu quando reconhecido pelo governo como Liga Anticancerosa (LAC), em 1926. Este artigo aborda os avanços que conduziram aos pioneiros esforços de recrutamento de agências governamentais de saúde, médicos e leigos na divulgação sobre os primeiros sinais da doença, assim como as motivações políticas e médicas e as implicações de seu declínio. Além de assinalar a importância de iniciativas profissionais no ativismo na temática do câncer, a contextualização da ascensão e declínio da LAC chama a atenção para os reflexos da hospitalização no tratamento do câncer sobre aspectos indiretamente relacionados ao tratamento, como os esforços de sensibilização pública.

Arresting Leprosy: Therapeutic Outcomes Besides Cure.

This essay focuses on the use of the concept of "arrest" in Hansen's disease (leprosy) in the United States in the early to middle part of the 20th century, as well as the transformations the concept underwent with the arrival of sulfone drugs and the implications of these changes for patients and public health officers. An "arrest" was a therapeutic outcome characterized by a long course of treatment, noncontagiousness, a very small chance of reactivation, and a need for postdischarge maintenance that depended on sociomedical infrastructures beyond the clinic as well as self-imposed lifestyle limitations. The concept of disease arrest shows that experts and laypeople alike have valued therapeutic outcomes other than "cure" that signal certain optimal therapeutic milestones, despite the practical difficulties they imply and despite the fact that they do not promise a return to a pre-illness stage.

Aborto, abandono, y la muerte de Augusta García Platas en Ayacucho, Perú, 1946 / Abortion, neglect, and the death of Augusta García Platas en Ayacucho, Peru, in 1946

Resumen Augusta García Platas murió tras un aborto clandestino en Ayacucho en 1946. Este ensayo, basado en materiales del Archivo Histórico de Ayacucho, da cuenta del proceso criminal que se abrió para determinar los responsables de su muerte. A pesar de que sindicaron a ciertos individuos como culpables directos de provocar el aborto, las autoridades judiciales consideraban que la causa de fondo de la muerte de la joven había sido el abandono por parte de quienes debían velar por su salud física y moral. Este caso nos brinda la oportunidad de esclarecer las estrategias que los implicados usaban para defenderse de acusaciones criminales. Además, nos ayuda a entender las diversas deficiencias del Poder Judicial peruano de mediados del siglo XX.

Abstract Augusta García Platas died after a clandestine abortion in Ayacucho in 1946. This article, based on material in the Historical Archive in Ayacucho, examines the criminal trial that was held to determine who was responsible for her death. Although the judicial authorities accused certain individuals of being directly responsible for inducing an abortion, they considered that the root cause of the young woman’s death was neglect on the part of those who were supposed to protect her physical and moral health. This case provides an opportunity to clarify the strategies used by the defendants to refute criminal charges. It also helps us understand the various deficiencies of the Peruvian legal system in the mid-twentieth century.

Abortion, neglect, and the death of Augusta García Platas en Ayacucho, Peru, in 1946. / Aborto, abandono, y la muerte de Augusta García Platas en Ayacucho, Perú, 1946.

Augusta García Platas died after a clandestine abortion in Ayacucho in 1946. This article, based on material in the Historical Archive in Ayacucho, examines the criminal trial that was held to determine who was responsible for her death. Although the judicial authorities accused certain individuals of being directly responsible for inducing an abortion, they considered that the root cause of the young woman's death was neglect on the part of those who were supposed to protect her physical and moral health. This case provides an opportunity to clarify the strategies used by the defendants to refute criminal charges. It also helps us understand the various deficiencies of the Peruvian legal system in the mid-twentieth century.

Aborto, abandono, y la muerte de Augusta García Platas en Ayacucho, Perú, 1946 / Abortion, neglect, and the death of Augusta García Platas en Ayacucho, Peru, in 1946

Augusta García Platas murió tras un aborto clandestino en Ayacucho en 1946. Este ensayo, basado en materiales del Archivo Histórico de Ayacucho, da cuenta del proceso criminal que se abrió para determinar los responsables de su muerte. A pesar de que sindicaron a ciertos individuos como culpables directos de provocar el aborto, las autoridades judiciales consideraban que la causa de fondo de la muerte de la joven había sido el abandono por parte de quienes debían velar por su salud física y moral. Este caso nos brinda la oportunidad de esclarecer las estrategias que los implicados usaban para defenderse de acusaciones criminales. Además, nos ayuda a entender las diversas deficiencias del Poder Judicial peruano de mediados del siglo XX.(AU)

Footprints on the future: looking forward to the history of health and medicine in Latin America in the twenty-first century

This essay analyzes the current state of the field of history of health and medicine in Latin America and proposes questions and areas for further investigation. Using a variety of databases to identify relevant historiographical sources from across the Americas, the authors focus on a range of subjects that have substantially engaged contemporary historians while opening up still more research avenues. These include the health of diverse populations; new perspectives on religion and on women's health; the historicizing of health systems, health politics, and social medicine; and the local-global nexus in Latin American health and medicine. These themes both draw from and extend beyond those addressed in pathbreaking works such as Nancy Leys Stepan's Beginnings of Brazilian Science. Among the most stimulating developments of recent years are the incorporation of interdisciplinary perspectives on historical analysis, and the elucidation of regional patterns of and preoccupations with the interrelations among state, society, and medicine. The proliferation of historical knowledge regarding the health and medical landscape of Latin America has made this one of the most dynamic fields in historical scholarship today. The authors conclude by discussing emerging methodological and theoretical challenges, including Cold War studies and postcolonialism, and by reflecting on the shared scholarly and political responsibilities of Latin Americanists. (AU)

Demographic knowledge and nation-building: the Peruvian census of 1940.

The demographers who organized the 1940 census of Peru portrayed the increasingly mixed-race Peruvian population as indicative of the breaking down of cultural barriers to the emergence of a robust Peruvian identity, a process that, they claimed, would lead to greater national development. This paper analyzes the ways in which demographers constructed cultural heterogeneity as a potential national asset. This reveals how scientific knowledge of miscegenation affected the formation of a nationalist project in the second half of the twentieth century, and also how demographers' ideological commitments to socialism shaped scientific practice.

Diecinueve parroquías: planificación familiar católica en el Perú, 1967-1976 / Nineteen parishes: catholic familiar planning in Peru, 1967-1976

El presente texto desarrolla dos argumentos centrales. Primero, la provisión de anticonceptivos orales fue una solución original que permitió armonizar la doutrina católica con la vez más popular convicción de que el control de la natalidad era un asunto de justicia social. Segundo, el programa desarrollado por la Iglesia católica peruana incluyó aspectos educacionales, la promoción del concepto de paternidad responsable y la participación de la familia y la comunidad, en gran medida, por la poca voluntad de los líderes católicos de dejar el control de la natalidad enteramente en manos de las mujeres.

Diecinueve parroquías: planificación familiar católica en el Perú, 1967-1976 / Nineteen parishes: catholic familiar planning in Peru, 1967-1976

El presente texto desarrolla dos argumentos centrales. Primero, la provisión de anticonceptivos orales fue una solución original que permitió armonizar la doutrina católica con la vez más popular convicción de que el control de la natalidad era un asunto de justicia social. Segundo, el programa desarrollado por la Iglesia católica peruana incluyó aspectos educacionales, la promoción del concepto de paternidad responsable y la participación de la familia y la comunidad, en gran medida, por la poca voluntad de los líderes católicos de dejar el control de la natalidad enteramente en manos de las mujeres. [AU]