Health Policies in Interwar Europe. A Transnational Perspective (Routledge Studies in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine)

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

Health policies in the twentieth century: a transnational issue

• Why transnational history?
• Circulating science and technology
• The civilising process and homo hygienicus

Historical origins of health policies

• From public health to social medicine: the political dimension of disease
• The birth of public health
• International diplomacy and national institutions
• The Office Internationale d’Hygiène Publique and the League of Nations

Networks of experts: national policies and transnational actors

• Health and international diplomacy
• Creating expert knowledge
• Public health experts as transnational actors

The relevance of international organisations

• Transnational actors guiding health research and health policies: the historical context of national health institutes
• Legitimising arguments: moral values, health, and economy

Research for the nation: national institutes of hygiene

• Bacteriology, a cornerstone for colonial medicine
• Origins and impact of the Pasteur Institute
• Robert Koch-Institut in Berlin
• London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and national research institutes in Britain
• Social medicine and sanitary policies in Hungary
• National Institute of Hygiene and Public Health in Poland
• Central Institute of Hygiene in Belgrade
• Prague as a social hygiene laboratory
• Alfonso XIII National Institute of Hygiene in Madrid
• Public health institutes in Scandinavia

Instructing the experts: national schools of public health

• Teaching the experts: more than a national issue
• National schools and public health experts
• The international model: Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore
• Teaching hygiene in European nations: France, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Rumania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Spain
• International initiatives: courses in London and Paris
• The great failure: École Internationale d’Hautes Études d’Hygiène [International School of Advanced Studies in Hygiene]

Final comments and conclusions

• Sources and bibliography

Index

Research into public health policies and expert instruction has been oriented traditionally in the national context. There is a rich historiography that analyses the development of health policies and systems in various European and American countries during the first decades of the twentieth century. What is often ignored, however, is the study of the great many connections and circulations of knowledge, people, technologies, artefacts and practices during that period between countries. This book redresses that balance.

• The volume highlights the importance of a transnational approach and the advantages and understanding it contributes to unveiling the powerful international actors playing a transcendental role in national public health
• Comparisons are made between Spain and a host of other European countries as public health provision was altered irrevocably over the course of the twentieth century
• The author is the leader of the research group "Sanhisoc/Health in Society" devoted to the history of public health and nutrition in contemporary Europe