Medicine as a Social Political Science

The Case of Spain c. 1920

Abstract

This paper discusses the Spanish contribution to the forming of Social Medicine, as a particular understanding of the relationship between health and society that eventually became a formal discipline, as a variant of Public Health. It focuses on two questions, first the literary tradition linking Social Sciences and Medicine, and the forming of the key concept of “social disease”; and, second, on the nature and aims of the inter-professional groups that championed this process. If during centuries, medical concepts had been used to explain social life, around the time of the First World War, doctors started to explain medical matters in social terms, in order to both reinforce their monopoly and offer a kind of solutions to social evils suited to the new professional middle classes. Massive programmes of prevention and care were applied as a receipt against severe social unrest, developing a trend of long lasting influence.