Aux origines de l'Inserm : André Chevallier et l'Institut national d'hygiène

Abstract

Before Inserm : André Chevallier and The Institut national d'hygiène It was in 1941, under the Vichy government that the INH, later to become the Inserm, the first ongoing government organization was created for research in medicine and public health in France. One can presume that an authoritarian regime is more capable of establishing a health policy than a parliamentary democracy which is more sensitive to the protection of the individual and minorities, but it is also necessary to recognize the importance of American aid to France during WWII and in particular that of the International Health division of the Rockefeller Foundation. The first general manager of INH was Pr André Chevallier, a physician specialized in physiology of nutrition and vitamines in Marseille. From 1942 to 1946, the date when Chevallier resigned from the management of the INH in Paris for political reasons — too much collaborations not with the Germans but with the Americans! — , he placed the most emphasis on questions of prenatal care and pediatrics in response to the problems of food and vitamines shortages. Another sections of the INH was in charge of social diseases, such as tuberculosis, syphilis or cancer. In spite it had most difficulty in doing its work in epidemiology because of the tradition of corporatism and the silent resistance of French practitioners to social medicine, to the great satisfaction of the French Ministry of Health, the INH could publish the conclusions of its first survey before the war ended.