Open AccessSalud pública y política agraria liberal en España. La Inspección de Sanidad del campo (1910-1918)
Author(s) -
Esteban Rodríguez Ocaña
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
asclepio
Language(s) - Spanish
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.146
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1988-3102
pISSN - 0210-4466
DOI - 10.3989/asclepio.2010.v62.i2.470
Subject(s) - agrarian society , public health , christian ministry , political science , humanities , meaning (existential) , public administration , welfare economics , agriculture , geography , medicine , nursing , law , economics , philosophy , archaeology , psychology , psychotherapist
This paper reviews the meaning of the Rural Health Bureau (1910-1918) for the history of Spanish public health, thanks to a wealth of previously unknown sources found through a systematic search through medical journals of the time and the Bulletin of the national department of Agriculture. The Bureau was dependent of the Ministry of Development, in the same way as the competences on animal health. It aimed to provide a public health rationale for a plan of agrarian infrastructures, a goal resolved into a huge task of surveillance on hookworm disease, malaria, water supplies, and diet. Thus it becomes a perfect paradigm of the Spanish Liberal tradition of promoting information instead than actual changes into society, as well as a needed complement to the hydraulic policy sponsored by Rafael Gasset.