November, 4th, 2020
The new issue of HCS-Manguinhos features studies that demonstrate the importance of history for understanding the present. This edition has three articles that have been translated into English /Spanish.
The scorching tropics: fevers and public health in Brazil during the Joanine period, 1808-1821, by Ricardo Cabral de Freitas, researcher of Fiocruz graduate program explores the fevers in nineteenth-century Brazilian society. Their victims suffered from a wide variety of symptoms, and identification and treatment of these symptoms were the object of intense debates in medical circles.
In Health, science and development: the emergence of American cutaneous leishmaniasis as a medical and public health challenge in Amazonas state, Brazil, Claudio de Oliveira Peixoto, from Fiocruz Amazonas, details the emergence of this disease in the 1970s. Despite advances in the production of knowledge about the infection, it continues to cause repeated outbreaks that are difficult to control, also reflecting the precarious living conditions of vulnerable populations. Of the approximately 12 million infected by leishmaniasis in the world (cutaneous and visceral), Brazil is the country most affected.
We are also publishing an article in this issue on the history of social medicine in Chile, the product of an investigation carried out by Eric Carter and Marcelo Sánchez. The text is accompanied by two letters that question, comment on or respond to the criticism in the article; one of them written by important US public health specialist Howard Waitzkin. By publishing the text together with the letters, we want to take one more step in the direction of the ideal of open science.
Enjoy the reading!
