Scientific rhetoric in the consolidation of a therapeutic monopoly. Medical discourses of Spanish radiotherapists, 1895-1936.

This paper analyses the medical discourses produced by the pioneers of Spanish radiotherapy in order to market their new therapy and to establish their monopoly. Social negotiation (persuasion and consensus) involved radiologists arguing against surgeons, gynaecologists, dermatologists and otorhinolaryngologists (ENT specialists). The arguments revolved around the scientific foundations of radiotherapy, the ability to control the doses, and the value of doctors' clinical experience. Radiotherapists argued that the difficulties of their practice necessitated special expertise; they negotiated over the range of use of radiotherapy, beginning with palliative applications, and going on to establish wider claims of advantage over existing treatments.

[Internationalism and science. Social and scientific bases of the European information science movement]. / Internacionalismo y ciencia. Las bases sociocientíficas del movimiento documental europeo.

As part of a continuing line of research on scientific documentation we propose in this article a novel approach to the study of the European information science movement at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. We suggest that this movement took place within the context of increasing internationalism of scientific endeavours, a process which was paralleled by the standardization of units, weight and measures for the different sciences. We investigate problems arising from scientific communication in connection with other aspects apparently unrelated to Information Science. Specifically, we refer to conflicts between nationalism and colonialism; concordance and discord between science policy and the corporate interests of nonscientific associations; higher educational policy; the professionalization of sciences; and the economic interests at stake as a consequence of the use of different information models.

[Professionalization of physicians and health campaigns in twentieth-century Spain]. / Profesionalización médica y campañas sanitarias en la España del siglo XX.

In this study we analyze the confluence of two processes that characterized the medical profession in Spain during the first third of the twentieth century. Health campaigns provided a formula for strengthening the interests of the professional collective by defining the demand for specific medical services, and consolidating the institutionalization of new areas of medicine, thus justifying their existence on a scientific basis. In addition, these health campaigns, to a great extent, based their propositions on the reputation of the specialist. We analyze two historical cases: the fight against infant mortality and the fight against cancer; the contributions of these two campaigns to the opening of a market for new specialist services, the role of technology, and processes of negotiation with other branches of medicine to guarantee a monopoly in providing treatment are examined.

[Treatment of uterine myoma (1876-1936). A professional controversy between surgeons and radiologists]. / El tratamiento de los miomas uterinos (1876-1936). Una controversia profesional entre cirujanos y radiólogos.

All along the process of development of radiotherapy as a medical specialty, different controversies have emerged making dermatologists, gynecologists, ear, nose and throat specialists, and radiotherapists fight each other for the monopoly of the therapy based on radiation. In the present work we study an aspect of the negotiations that shaped up the therapeutical policy in the treatment of uterine myomas.