Official Medicine Research Articles

¿Rumores, miedo o epidemia? La peste de 1913 y 1914 en la costa atlántica de Colombia

By the end of the 1800s, international trade and steam navigation made way for the third bubonic plague pandemy, which started in China in 1891 and reached America in 1898. This calamity apparently arrived in Columbia's coast between 1913 and 1915, during the apex of Pasteur medicine. The deficiencies of Columbian public scientific and sanitary apparat, concerning the emerging bacteriology and epidemiology, prevented the government and the medical body from reacting against the fear and rumor of epidemy, which negatively affected the trade. The authorities were also unable to fight this problem with adequate diagnosis, enferms treatment, urban sanitation, and isolation of infected places. These difficulties led to a confrontation between the government and the medical body, inciting an argument about the existence of the plague. This discussion was settled by the North American official medicine that, in its verdict, gave preference to the commercial interests of the United States, ignoring the sanitary urgencies of the Columbian Atlantic coast.

A arte de curar dos profissionais de saúde popular em tempo de cólera: Grão-Pará do século XIX

Durante a epidemia de cólera que assolou o Grão-Pará, em 1855, pouco mais de uma dezena de anônimos profissionais de saúde popular inscreveram suas artes de curar nos anais da história. As terapias não eram muitas, mas foram disseminadas nos jornais provinciais ou pela forte tradição oral presente na Amazônia. Uma dessas terapias - o uso do sumo de limão - chegou a ser avalizada pelos médicos da província como cientificamente correta. Os homens que "não eram médicos, nem cirurgiões" usavam ervas e frutos medicinais preparados em sumos, infusões, banhos, emplastos e supositórios, rompendo as fronteiras estabelecidas pela arte oficial de curar, a medicina alopática, que tentava estabelecer-se hegemonicamente. Descrevo a trilha da cólera até o Grão-Pará e analiso o contexto social da epidemia; os conhecimentos sobre a cólera: as possibilidades de socorro oferecidas à população e as práticas curativas então adotadas.

The epilepsy of Emperor Michael IV, Paphlagon (1034-1041 A.D.): accounts of Byzantine historians and physicians.

Presentation of epilepsy suffered by Byzantine Emperor Michael IV, Paphlagon (who reigned from 1034 to 1041 A.D.) and the attitude of his contemporary society to his disorder. Research into the accounts of Byzantine historians and chroniclers referring to the case of the emperor and Byzantine medical texts revealing the opinion of official medicine about the disorder. Byzantine historians and chroniclers provide detailed clinical descriptions of the seizures of Emperor Michael IV. Nearly all, expressing popular opinion, considered his disease to be demonic possession that constituted a form of divine punishment for the emperor's adultery and act of murder; his royal entourage continually attempted euphemistically to present this condition as a psychic disease. On the contrary, research into Byzantine medical texts reveals that the physicians, already from the 4th century, following Hippocratic tradition, believed that epilepsy was primarily a brain-related disorder and based their treatment on this etiological principle. From the study of the Byzantine histories and chronicles, it can be deduced that Emperor Michael IV, Paphlagon, suffered from generalized tonic-clonic epileptic seizures. Despite the concept then held by well-educated Byzantine doctors, who considered epilepsy a brain disorder, information indicates the deep prejudices of his social environment.

Water, Air and Light - Arnold Rikli (1823-1906)

This article is a reminder of a famous Swiss healer, Arnold Rikli, who is also considered to be one of the pioneers of the modern health tourism in Slovenia. Rikli moved to the Alpine region of Lake Bled in 1855 to build a health resort after having established his own natural healing method based on the effects of light, air and water on the human body. His resort was visited by rich patients who were treated for numerous diseases under special, "revolutionary" conditions. The inhabitants of Bled and the official medicine strongly opposed Rikli's activities, also because of Rikli's particular character, but some of his practices are still relevant today.

A Comparative Study of Rhodiola rosae under Cultivation and Natural Growing Conditions

Rhodiola rosae L., from the Crassulacea family, is a perennial widely known in Russian folk and official medicine for its adaptogenic properties. The extracts from the roots of Rhodiola rosae is known to be a better alternative to ginseng because of its better effects, safety for people having high blood pressure, cardiac and kidney problems, pregnancy, and minors. Rhodiola is collected mostly from the wild, and this practice has resulted in the decimation of the wild population in Altai mountains and in southern Siberia. The objective of this investigation was to find the best method of production and guarantee the availability of the raw material without compromising the quality. Plants were studied under naturally growing conditions and brought into cultivation. We used seeds to propagate. Morphological traits, flowering, leaf area, shoot and root yield, and content of salidroside (biologically active component in the root) were measured in 50 plants. The measurements were taken during the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd years of the cultivated plants, while parallel measurements were taken from the same place of naturally growing plants. Plants under natural conditions did not receive any agronomic treatment, while normal agronomic practices were given for plots under cultivation. We found significant difference an all measured parameters. Though higher root yield was obtained from cultivated plants, the concentration of salidroside was found to be higher naturally grown plants. With the increasing age of the cultivated plants, however, the concentration of salidroside significantly increased. The total yield of salidroside, g/m2 was found to increase consistently each year for cultivated variants compared to plots under natural growth.

Diabetes mellitus: lessons from patient education.

The education of diabetic patients, proposed as an essential therapeutic tool since the early 1920s and accepted as such by official medicine only in the 1970s, has generated great enthusiasm over the last decade, with increasing concern for greater effectiveness by improved motivation of both patients and doctors. Structured education depends on the precise definition of agreed, short-term objectives, whose attainment shall be verified. Educational objectives may be set at different levels: knowledge of the disease, skills required for treatment, capacity to integrate therapy in everyday life,... The most relevant objectives however are the therapeutic goals of each individual patient, i.e. most often, prevention of acute complications, near-normoglycemia to prevent late complications and foot care to prevent disabling consequences of the latter. This can only be attained through a global approach to the patient, at once medical, educational and psychological. Medical science has definitively confirmed the importance of near- normoglycemia and proposes more effective insulin regimens and new recommendations for diet and exercise. Education demands a lot from health care providers: specific training, teaching skills, good communication, supportive attitude, readiness to listen and to negotiate. Patients' motivation to learn and adhere to treatment is also greatly influenced by individual factors, both psychological and environmental, that need to be taken into account.

Official statistics and medicine in nineteenth-century France: the SGF as a case study.

The history of data collection in France over the course of the nineteenth century is described focusing on the work of the Statistique Generale de la France (SGF). The author notes that although this organization was responsible for both census and vital statistics information it did not concentrate on medical or epidemiological data but on data considered to be of economic or industrial utility. (ANNOTATION)

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Cet article s’intéresse à la naissance des hôpitaux de Paris aux XVIIème et XVIIIème siècles. L'institution de l'hôpital, inconnue pendant l'Antiquité, était essentiellement le produit de la charité chrétienne. Bien que les premiers hôpitaux de Paris remontent au début du Moyen Age, le XVIIème siècle fut particulièrement riche, non seulement en ce qui concerne la création de nouveaux hôpitaux, mais également pour la reconstruction d’hôpitaux plus anciens. Fruits d’actes de charité, ces hôpitaux ne se réclamaient pas de la médecine officielle. Les hôpitaux servirent le double rôle d'institution donneur de soins et de lutte contre la pauvreté et la clochardisation. En1657, la mendicité fut interdite. Les mendiants furent internés dans le système hospitalier général pour des raisons l'hygiène et par soucis philanthropiques. Dans la première moitié du siècle, les administrateurs cherchaient à mettre de l'ordre dans le système en séparant les différentes catégories de personnes internées. Cette tâche devait être complétée par des médecins et des administrateurs dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIème siècle en utilisant les catégories de la médecine clinique.

Elements of the health culture of polish society

The purpose of this article is to characterize Polish society from the point of view of health culture. The article is based on research conducted in 1978 on the representative national sample. In that research we sought to trace the dependence of styles of being sick, methods of treatment, and the entire related sphere of behavior on the following factors: • socio-demographic characteristics of patients, with special attention to their position in social structure; • availability of medical care service—in reality and perceived subjectively; • estimation of the state of health of patients; • confidence in medicine as a social institution, system of knowledge and in health care service; • medical knowledge of patients; • availability of other sources of help, alternative to official medicine.

From psychotherapy to psychoanalysis: Frederik van Eeden and Albert Willem van Renterghem

At the end of the nineteenth century, the unconscious was discovered by various students of the human mind. No agreement existed, however, about its nature–whether it represented the seat of the abnormal, the supranormal, or both. Frederik van Eeden (1860–1932), better known as a writer than as a physician, and Albert Willem van Renterghem (1846–1939), a country doctor, were both attracted by the philosophy of psychic monism and were disappointed by official medical science. They felt that that the mind played a greater role in curing and healing than official medicine could acknowledge. Van Eeden, a socialist, moved away from medical science. Fascinated by psychical research, he embraced Spiritualism and joined the Roman Catholic Church. His attitude toward psychoanalysis was ambivalent. Van Renterghem, by contrast, became a respected and well-to-do psychiatrist, and was one of the first Dutch physicians to embrace psychoanalysis. This study of two Dutch psychiatrists shows on the one hand that only gradually the mystically tinged soul of the first dynamic psychiatry became the conscious and unconscious mind of depth psychology, and on the other hand that the reception of psychoanalysis was furthered by the prevailing interest in mysticism.

Implications for the delivery of health care

Several international agencies have recently passed resolutions calling for increased comprehension of the interactions at the interface which links social organization of the community with systems of health care so as to make synergism possible. One of the bases on which more synergistic relationships can be built is by development and utilization of a comparative anthropology of health beliefs similar to the comparative epidemiological studies which have made such major contributions to the understanding of multiple causes of diseases. Another is the development of more centrifugal comprehensive care services reaching out to rural communities and integrating both traditional healers and local community leaders. A new partnership between official cosmopolitan medicine and local resources holds a promise of bringing back some of the human concern and hope that health systems need if they are really going to meet social needs.