Abstract
This article involves a critical examination of XIXth century military interventions, as the basic cause of the international contagion. Challenges arising and choices made in a critical reading of the International Sanitary Conferences (ISC) proceedings, reveal case histories and early statistical techniques at use with epidemiological purposes. These episodes in the history of the diseases suggest that relevant military information was circulated among health professionals through the ISCs. Although the evolution of the epidemic process during the latter half of the XIXth century made the Conferences fail to cure the diseases that the Western medicine own expansion engendered. By discussing the ways that prophylactic measures and international interventions were used by medical scientists and diplomats alike, from the detailed records of troop mortality to such ubiquitous terms as "contagion" and "quarantine", the article seriously reflect on what happened when action taken by military forces was a mass phenomenon. As evidenced from the study of the proceedings when comparing different populations, in the pathologies associated with the mass-transport era the rationale of interaction outlined the challenges involved in the train transport of troops. Also, the existence of an environmental risk factor can answer the question on the action taken by military forces as a mass phenomenon with huge impacts on hospitals, harbors and prisons. Materials intended for these international epidemics studies and commissions were prepared by experimented military and civil medical doctors who believed that evidence and common sense proved epidemic diseases capable of being prevented, treated, and controlled by a military approach. This essay demonstrates that Army forces' capability to take control over their host governing apparatus, emphasizes the importance of their aim to follow and accompany the control of the disease in the imperialist competition for land. It grows out of its specific historical context, which due to its origin could become uniform and international, but constituted the principal obstacle on the road to an international health office.
Highlights
For much of the XIXth century, the International Sanitary Conferences (ISC) was the chief route through which news of the propagation of communicable disease by the armies or by bodies of troops in movement was channelled to medical administrators and researchers on cholera, yellow fever, and plague (Harrison, 2006) (Huber, 2006)
In the second half of the XIX century, the development of epidemiologic thinking can be found in the proceedings of the International Sanitary Conferences (ISCs), by focusing on the characteristics of the Army Forces
A military point of view to assess the impact of communicable diseases drew heavily on contagionism, prompting cordons and quarantines to stop the circulation of carriers
Summary
For much of the XIXth century (second half), the International Sanitary Conferences (ISC) was the chief route through which news of the propagation of communicable disease by the armies or by bodies of troops in movement was channelled to medical administrators and researchers on cholera, yellow fever, and plague (Harrison, 2006) (Huber, 2006). While epidemiology is a discipline dealing with the evolution of knowledge (MacKillop & Sheard, 2019) (Coste, 2019), it would not be unjust to identify attitudes expressed at the ISCs on military regulations and troops’ transport as “epidemiologic agents”, because the military has kept a detailed record of troop mortality The description of these historical contexts in which this evolution has taken place (Rosenberg, 1992), give details about the military work and thought in the International Health Conferences between 1851 and 1897. Military campaign (Evans, 1988) was one of the main forms of mass migration in the 19th century, if it does mean the fast displacement of many thousands of people in large consolidated groups over long distances The goal at this level of the analysis is on the identification of the exact cause of interaction with military populations (eg, military advantages in steering quarantine agreements). This article is about the causes of the infectious diseases involved in military interventions, as can be read in the printed proceedings of the International Sanitary Conferences in the second half of the 19th century
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