RESUMEN BIBLIOGRAFICO

Abstract

1. In summary, a book of great interest for those who study medical thought and its relationship with the development of science. It shows how the concept of reflex does not come from the mechanistic current of Descartes but from the vitalistic animistic current of Willis. In this demonstration, he not only reviews the different stages of knowledge in a linear way, but also shows the value of the structural historical method for the analyst of facts as complex as the one reported.

2. In summary, the book analyzes, in the light of the May 68 movement in France, the various problems facing medicine, from the concept of health and disease to the problems of medical and hospital care at a given time. This analysis is made from a historical-structural perspective that enriches the study by shedding light on aspects still under study and not sufficiently clarified. It is important for those who intend to locate in concrete terms the situation of medicine today and its immediate future, of which this book is already a first step.

3. Starting from a brief history of hospitals, he points out how the conditions of medical care require not only the development of medical technology but also the development of a science of man beyond the administration of services and technology. In passing, he elaborates a health care scheme that has as a less important step the relationship of the patient with the physician on a personal level. In the end, he calls for the development of a new science of man based on medicine and health as the only way for medicine to stop being a simple extension of other sciences such as physics, chemistry or biology and become a science in its own right.

4. In short, a supremely important book for all those who intend to do science in the field of medicine overcoming the limits of the history of medical knowledge and making it necessary even for those who move in the field of clinical public health and especially in experimental research, pathology and physiology.

5. These data demonstrate, according to Navarro, “a disregard on the part of our political and social institutions for the health and safety of the working population”. The working conditions of miners are among the worst in the Western world, with one silicosis sufferer in five (5). Among migrant workers, life expectancy is 49 years, 20% less than the American average, and infant mortality is 60% higher than the national average. “Occupational disease infests the country like a plague.” The author ends by discussing the alienation of the worker in his workplace, lacking any control over the nature, product and conditions of his work. Ignored until recently, it is now a serious industrial problem, and the author discusses the involvement of professional public health organizations in solving it.

6. In short, this is an article that stimulates the reader and ends with a vibrant call to health workers “to go beyond the limits of disease and access the broader fields of human vitality and comfort”, to the more complex, more difficult but perhaps more worthy science of health epidemiology.