Government health activities between 1922 and 1936

Abstract

The 75th birthday of the Service provincial d'hygiène was commemorated in 1997. However we do not have a comprehensive history of this Service which succeeded the Conseil supérieur d'hygiène of the Province of Quebec (1887) and which eventually led to the institution of the Ministry of Health in 1936. Yet there have been significant changes in the field of public health in Quebec between 1921 and 1936, the period during which the Service provincial d'hygiène operated. We will show that through this organization, the Province played an essential role in establishing the first public health system and commencing the process of rnedicalization of the society. By 1919, federal intervention was added to provincial intervention through the establishment of the Federal Ministry of Health. But what was the structure of this provincial public health organization? How did it function? What resources did it have at its disposal to put in place a health and prevention policy? Although some recent studies have addressed the question of the appearance of a health policy at that time, there is still no analysis on the structure of this state sanitary agency, nor on its organization, functions, and means of actions. This study presents an example of the thesis adopted by the authors in previous works -i.e. that the historical vision of an unchanging health system in a static Quebec society before the Quiet Revolution must be rectified- it must also challenge the idea that, absent from this field, the state would not have adopted a health policy due to its own inertia or to the resistance of "liberal" forces and the opposition of the clergy.