Articles Volume 27 (2007)
Domestic medical care practised by women in low-medieval
Valencia
Carmel Ferragud
Summary
1.—Introduction. 2.—The illness and death of Bartomeu Sancho, peasant from
Valencia. 3.— Rejection of academic and professional medicine. 4.—Modification
of diet, use of purgatives, bandaging and other care techniques. 5.—Medicine
and the suffering of the sick person as a domestic and local neighbourhood
problem.
Abstract
Based on different documented cases from the second half of the
14th century, this article describes how women in the city of Valencia frequently
participated in the medical care of the people around them, not only relatives
but also neighbours, friends and customers. The type and conditions of the
care given by these women is analyzed. They are shown to have had a major
role in medicine, which was often silenced because they did not form part of
the masculine group that practised the art of curing in a more-or-less regulated
manner.
Hospitals and healthcare in Leon Province at the end of the Ancien Régime
Alfredo Martín García and María José Pérez Álvarez
Summary
1.—The healthcare network in Leon province in the mid-18th century. 2.—Hospitals
in the city of Leon. 3.—Characteristics of patients and deceased at the San
Antonio Abad Hospital.
Abstract
This work is structured in two parts. First, we examine the major
features of the healthcare system of the province of León around the mid-18th
century, focusing on its territorial distribution, the scope of its responsibilities
and its type of administration. In the second part, we study San Antonio Abad
Hospital, the most important hospital in the province at that time, describing
the sociological profile of its patients according to their sex, marital status, age
and place of origin.
Linguistic concerns and lexical mechanisms in the «Introducción
a la Historia Natural, y a la Geografía Fisica de España» by William
Bowles
Pilar Díez de Revenga and Miguel Ángel Puche Lorenzo
Summary
1.—Introduction. 2.—Definition procedures. 3.—Reception of neologisms.
3.1.— Foreign borrowing in the technical lexicon. 3.2.—Creation and adaptation
of neologisms. 4.—The local words in the technical lexicon. 5.—Synonymous binomials.
5.1.—Mining and Mineralogy. 5.2.—Botany. 5.3.—Zoology. 6.—Conclusions.
Abstract
Linguistic mechanisms of 18th century scientific language are studied
in the first Natural History text originally drafted in Spanish. William Bowles
describes linguistic concerns in science over the definition of terms that refer to
realities in the three natural kingdoms. Diatopic and diastratic variants and definition
procedures are reported, demonstrating the importance of these texts to
the History of Science and the History of the Spanish Language.
Care and well-being: female healthcare work in response to the
«social question» (1857-1936)
Carmen González Canalejo
Summary
1.—Introduction. 2.—Healthcare demands and the state of the «social question».
3.—The creation of new healthcare professionals: qualification and training of
midwives, nurses and nurse practitioners. 4.—Work incorporation and care areas.
5.—Contribution to health and social wellbeing. The different categories of
care. 6.—Conclusions.
Abstract
The healthcare practises performed of midwives, nurses and nurse
practitioners in Spain from 1857 to 1936 is analysed. This work deals with microhistory
from a feminist perspective, focusing on the identity of these female co-
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Dynamis 2007; 27: 9-18
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llectives in the province of Almería. Both their androcentric discourse and social
attitudes towards them are taken into account in an analysis of the way they carried
out their duties in comparison with the behaviour of other carers in other
regions of Spain. The different types of care provided by them to smooth the
«social question» can be established by studying the extent to which matrons,
nurses and nurse practitioners contributed to citizens’ health and social welfare
at that time.
The midwives of Guadalajara (México) in the 19th century, the
plundering of their art
Laura Catalina Díaz Robles and Luciano Oropeza Sandoval
Summary
1.—Introduction. 2.—First attempts to control and regulate midwives´ arts.
3.—Intervention of physicians in delivery. 4.—Discontinuity in the teaching of
midwives. 5—Teaching of obstetrics in the school of medicine. 6.—Reform of the
teaching of medicine.7.—Between resistance and subjection: by way of conclusion.
Abstract
This study examines the social devaluation of the knowledge and
practice used by midwives in their work. The research is limited to historical
events that took place during the 19th century in the city of Guadalajara, capital
of the state of Jalisco in Mexico. The study shows how the displacement and
subordination of these women were associated with the higher social status of
physicians. Supported by advances in medicine and by the authority derived
from the knowledge acquired through formal educational institutions, doctors
started to undermine the value of empirical knowledge and subordinate it to
the knowledge that came from these advances. It is shown how doctors detract
from and subordinated the midwife to the scientific-employment field of
medicine by using a discourse that degraded empirical knowledge and by institutionalizing
training courses that tended to ignore the practical know-how of
these women and replace it with knowledge derived from scientific medicine.
The study is based on information from archives and scientific journals of the
time: Archivo Fondos Especiales de la Biblioteca Pública de Jalisco, Archivo Histórico
de Jalisco, Archivo Histórico de la Universidad de Guadalajara, Archivo Municipal de
Guadalajara and Revista Médica.
A new identity for pharmacists: the Mexican Pharmaceutical
Society at the turn of the century (1890-1919)
Sandra Martínez Solís, Patricia Aceves Pastrana and Alba Morales Cosme
Summary
1.—Introduction. 2.—Pharmaceutical societies and pharmacopeias. 3.—Confused
legislation. 4.—A new curriculum for pharmacy education. 5.—Projects to
separate pharmacy training from the School of Medicine. 6.—Conclusions.
Abstract
The Mexican Pharmaceutical Society was founded in 1871. Pharmacists
in this Society organized and supported activities to develop their profession,
including the preparation of a Mexican pharmacopeia, promotion of the
interests of pharmacists and improvement of the profession, and the creation of
a unified legal framework for its practice. This society played a central role in the
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Dynamis 2007; 27: 9-18
13
institutionalization of pharmacy as a profession and in the expansion of pharmacists
into new areas, especially in relation to the transfer of pharmacy training
from the National School of Medicine to the School of Chemical Sciences in
1919, when they took on a new identity as chemists.
The 1918 influenza epidemic in Bogota
Juan Fernando Carvajal Estupiñán, Abel Fernando Martínez Martín, Bernardo
Francisco Meléndez Álvarez and Fred Gustavo Manrique Abril
Summary
1.—Introduction. 2.—Studies related to the pandemic. 3.—Colombia in 1918.
4.— Bogotá in 1918. 5.—Influenza in Bogotá. 6.—Clinical behaviour and attributed
causes. 7.—The activity of organisations against the epidemic. 8.—Conclusions.
Abstract
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 was one of the most severe
recorded in Colombia. There were 1,900 deaths in the capital, Bogota. The poor
and unprotected were the most affected. Care of victims was the responsibility
of the Junta de Socorros, a private body. Based on different primary sources
(mostly official documents, Junta de Socorros reports, newspapers, and medical
journals) this article explores how the 1918 influenza pandemic altered Bogotá’s
social dynamics, with particular attention to its impact on disease and mortality
rates and to an analysis of how the city’s sanitary conditions and political-institutional
decisions and the reactions of different social sectors influenced the
response of this human community to the pandemic.
It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees: Emilio Mira y
López and the social revolution
Annette Múlberger and Ana María Jacó-Vilela
Summary
1.—Introduction. 2.—The Catalan context and the political and professional activity
of Emilio Mira y López (1896-1964). 3.—The issue of revolution in medicine
and psychology. 4.—Psychology at the service of the socialist revolution in the
works of Emilio Mira y López. 5.—Results of Mira’s psychological study of the revolution.
6.—Conclusion.
Abstract
Although the socialist ideology of the Catalan psychiatrist Emilio
Mira y López (1896-1964) is relatively well known, his psychological-political
contribution has been ignored. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, Mira’s psychological
analysis of the social revolution is situated in the historical context of
Catalonia and Spain before Franco’s Dictatorship, taking account of biographical
and political as well as scientific and cultural aspects. Second, the way in which
Mira related psychology to politics is explored by examining the extent to which
his scientific work reflected his socialist ideas.
The medical debate on contraception and abortion in Buenos Aires
in the 1960s
Karina A. Felitti
Summary
1.—Introduction. 2.—Debates on the contraceptive pill and the beginnings of
family planning in Buenos Aires. 3.—«Criminal» abortion as a medical and social
problem. 4.—New and old considerations on female sexuality. 5.—Some current
legacies of these debates.
Abstract
During the 1960s, there were important medical debates in Buenos
Aires about the effects of the birth control pill on women’s health and about
its political, demographic and moral consequences. Other issues addressed by
healthcare professionals in the Buenos Aires Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology
were abortion and changes in gender relations and sexual behaviours. These
discussions are analyzed in this article, taking account of the specific national
and international context and pointing to some of the consequences of these
debates for the «contraception culture» of the country.