Medicine and Public Health in Latin America: A History

New Approaches to the Americas

by Marcos Cueto, Steven Palmer

Despite several studies on the social, cultural, and political histories of medicine and of public health in different parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, local and national focuses still predominate, and there are few panoramic studies that analyze the overarching tendencies in the development of health in the region. This comprehensive book summarizes the social history of medicine, medical education, and public health in Latin America and places it in dialogue with the international historiographical currents in medicine and health. Ultimately, this text provides a clear, broad, and provocative synthesis of the history of Latin American medical developments while illuminating the recent challenges of global health in the region and other developing countries.

Genres: History

318 pages, Hardcover

First published November 28, 2014

Reviews

[Tyler Munn]

I am so glad to have a book like this in English. The authors have a great respect for the wide varieties of epistemological positions in medicine and public health throughout the history of Latin America.

The book works largely chronologically and investigates wide themes, like medical pluralism in early colonial periods or the role of medicine in nation building, and provides brief specific examples in the forms of short biographies of key figures or descriptions of exemplary events.

This book opens many fascinating questions about public health history in Latin America that have yet to be answered, especially in the anglophone literature. Many topics that are addressed in one or two paragraphs deserve book length exploration.

This text was very useful in my project of locating the context of the rise of social medicine as an alternative epistemological tradition. If you have just one question about Latin American public health history, like I did, I would highly recommend you read though whole book. You will find answers to questions you didn't know you had and many new questions you may be inspired to investigate yourself.