International Social Medicine between the Wars

Positioning a Volatile Concept

Abstract

International health work during the 1930s was influenced by several interacting developments which caused general attention to turn away from pathogens and individual diseases to social conditions and their impact on the status of public health. Internationally, the League of Nations Health Organisation became the centre of initiatives in social medicine. After 1932, the search for the health implications of the depression invigorated ongoing social studies. Thus, nutrition, housing and rural hygiene became major issues, followed by discussions on sports. All these topics had important political connotations because they touched sensitive questions of welfare, status and the distribution of wealth and poverty within societies. In the process, they opened discussions on abstract issues like social and moral justice and on tangible questions of political systems.