The efforts to change the bleak image of the atom bomb galvanised the discourse on the peaceful applications of nuclear energy. This contributed to a utopian vision of nuclear energy, especially of the uses of radioactive isotopes in the immediate post-war period. Desire for peace engendered dreams of a better future based on the use of radioactivity. These dreams were first...
This paper aims to examine the rise and the fall of biomedicine in the public legitimization of the development of nuclear energy. Until the late 1950s, biological and medical applications of radioisotopes were presented as the most important successes of the peaceful uses of atomic energy. I will argue that despite the major financial investment, the development of the uses of...
This paper presents a framework for the study of George Hevesy's research in the 1910s by distinguishing two styles of radioactivity research: the analytical (as practices in Manchester and Vienna in some extent) and the natural historical styles (as practiced in Hungary). Georg Hevesy's approach combined the two types. Indeed, by studying Hevesy's research in context, I show...
El médico militar Felipe Ovilo Canales fue una figura destacada y representativa de los proyectos coloniales españoles en Marruecos durante la Restauración. A diferencia de las iniciativas de otros países europeos, dichos proyectos se orientaron a impulsar y controlar el proceso de reformas del Estado marroquí. En este trabajo se analizará cómo, en el plano de las ideas políticas...
This study presents an in-depth analysis of Alexander von Humboldt's descriptions and critical comments on the colonial society of the different regions he visited during his well-known expedition through the Americas (1799-1804). The criticisms of colonialism that he expressed, reflecting his personal convictions, have already been the focal point of many studies, but Humboldt...
This paper analyses the impact of laboratory medicine on veterinary medicine in Spain at the turn of the twentieth century. It is considered from a perspective that places the laboratory at the centre of a strategy for introducing the ideal of progress into veterinary medicine at a sensitive moment in its history. In the adverse context created by the steady replacement of horses...
En sus Quesiti et inventione diverse (Venecia, 1546) Niccoló Tartaglia propuso una teoría del lanzamiento de proyectiles centrada en la resistencia opuesta por el aire y su subsiguiente división. Pienso que su explicación está inspirada en tres referentes, que aquí se analizan. El primero de ellos es su contemporáneo Vannoccio Biringuccio, quien formuló el concepto del fractura...
En este artículo, en primer lugar, se repasan de forma general distintos tipos de registros simbólicos realizados por los grupos prehistóricos desde los más remotos y probables orígenes de la mente humana moderna. A continuación, se revisan algunas de las más destacadas piezas de la Prehistoria relacionadas con el registro matemático, destacando la importancia (por cantidad y...
The aim of this paper is to analyze a sample of domestic economy handbooks in order to assess the popularization of correct food and feeding practices in Spain between 1847 and 1950. With this contribution, we wish to evaluate another factor that would influence the Spanish food transition. We are aware that this is a very indirect source, given the high levels of illiteracy...
The development of international health from a historical point of view has undergone major advances in recent times and constitutes a substantial part of the current agenda for historians of medicine. Within this framework, and focussing on a specific case study (international responses to poliomyelitis outbreaks in the 20th century), we explore the main actions and achievements...
Tomando como ámbito cronológico el periodo comprendido entre la pandemia de Peste Negra y los inicios de la era bacteriológica y como ámbito territorial Europa, el Mediterráneo y Norteamérica, este artículo se ocupa de la morfología de los lazaretos en su conjunto, teniendo en cuenta las diferentes tradiciones y saberes que influyeron en su configuración.
Se pretende analizar la modulación y transformaciones de los discursos y reivindicaciones socialistas en materia sanitaria durante el periodo comprendido entre 1883 y 1904, con el objeto de demostrar su alto grado de politización y su deseo de integración social y política. En este sentido, se analiza el papel político desempeñado por la salud y la higiene en la construcción de...
Statistics seem to give little information about individuals' fates. With the help of patient journals, the interwoven connections between quantitative and qualitative aspects of historical research work can be shown. This example focuses on the patients who, between 1829 and 1864, built up the practice of the lay homeopath Clemens Maria Franz von Bönninghausen in Münster...
Este artículo reconstruye el importante lugar ocupado por las pasiones en los discursos teóricos y las retóricas profesionales de la medicina española del siglo XIX. Con el fin de ampliar sus recursos explicativos y terapéuticos frente a la enfermedad, pero, sobre todo, de avalar su competencia como expertos en el estudio y la regulación de las pasiones, los médicos españoles...
La estatura es utilizada por los pediatras y los antropólogos como medida de salud y bienestar de las poblaciones humanas. En las últimas décadas los historiadores la usan como indicador biológico del nivel vida para explorar el impacto producido por las transformaciones ambientales, sociales y económicas en el bienestar del pasado. Este artículo muestra las contribuciones...
This paper tells the early history of penicillin patenting in Spain. Patents turn out to be useful instruments for analysing the management of knowledge and its circulation in different professional and geographical domains. They protected knowledge while contributing to standardisation. Patents also ensured quality and guaranteed reliability in manufacturing, delivering and...
The historiography of penicillin has tended to overlook the importance of developing and disseminating know-how in fermentation technology. A focus on this directs attention to work before the war of a network in the US and Europe concerned with the production of organic acids, particularly gluconic and citric acids. At the heart of this network was the German-Czech Konrad...
It was in the 1940s that antibiotic resistance arose as an object of study for clinical medicine. Somewhat earlier it had become an important analytical tool for bacterial geneticists. However, the concept of antibiotic resistance as an induced and inheritable trait of microbial species was introduced a generation earlier in the years preceding the First World War. The paper...
During World War II, the United States implemented programs to exploit hundreds of raw materials in Latin America, many of them botanical. This required the participation of the country's scientific community and marked the beginning of intervention in Latin American countries characterized by the active participation of the United States in negotiations (and not only by private...