PHA-Exchange> The politics of health (2)

[Claudio]

From: Ruggiero, Mrs. Ana Lucia (WDC) 


From: Andersonma at aol.com [mailto:Andersonma at aol.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 12:01 AM
To: list:equidad
Subject: Re: [EQ] Towards a politics of health

 

I hope it is not out of place to note that the "politics of health" is hardly a "newly identified discipline."  Indeed most of you will undoubtedly know of many people in Latin  America, in Africa and elsewhere who died because of the "politics of health."  Those interested in a taste of the historical background might want to look at our paper: 

 

What is Social Medicine?

            Matthew R. Anderson, Lanny Smith, and Victor W. Sidel

            Monthly Review, January 2005 

 

Available online at http://www.monthlyreview.org/0105anderson.htm

 

"....Although he was not the first to point out the links between society and health, the German physician, Rudolf Virchow, is considered by many to be the founder of social medicine. Virchow was one of the great pathologists of the nineteenth century, most notably contributing to the understanding of disease at the cellular level. He was also keenly aware of the social origins of illness. In 1848, while working as a staff physician at the Royal Charité Hospital in Berlin, he investigated an outbreak of typhus in the Prussian province of Upper Silesia. Virchow identified social factors, such as poverty and the lack of education and democracy, as key elements in the development of the epidemic..."



Matt Anderson, MD, MSc, Assistant Professor, 
Department of Family and Social Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
718 933-2400 x644 fax: 718 367-8168 www.socialmedicine.org

 



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