Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: constructing international health between the wars
- 2 ‘Custodians of the sacred fire’: the ICRC and the postwar reorganisation of the International Red Cross
- 3 Red Cross organisational politics, 1918–1922: relations of dominance and the influence of the United States
- 4 The League of Nations Health Organisation
- 5 Assistance and not mere relief: the Epidemic Commission of the League of Nations, 1920–1923
- 6 Wireless wars in the eastern arena: epidemiological surveillance, disease prevention and the work of the Eastern Bureau of the League of Nations Health Organisation, 1925–1942
- 7 Social medicine at the League of Nations Health Organisation and the International Labour Office compared
- 8 The Social Section and Advisory Committee on Social Questions of the League of Nations
- 9 ‘Uncramping child life’: international children's organisations, 1914–1939
- 10 The International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation: the Russell years, 1920–1934
- 11 The cycles of eradication: the Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American public health, 1918–1940
- 12 The Pasteur Institutes between the two world wars. The transformation of the international sanitary order
- 13 Internationalising nursing education during the interwar period
- 14 Mental hygiene as an international movement
- 15 Mobilising social knowledge for social welfare: intermediary institutions in the political systems of the United States and Great Britain between the First and Second World Wars
- Index
- Cambridge History of Medicine
12 - The Pasteur Institutes between the two world wars. The transformation of the international sanitary order
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: constructing international health between the wars
- 2 ‘Custodians of the sacred fire’: the ICRC and the postwar reorganisation of the International Red Cross
- 3 Red Cross organisational politics, 1918–1922: relations of dominance and the influence of the United States
- 4 The League of Nations Health Organisation
- 5 Assistance and not mere relief: the Epidemic Commission of the League of Nations, 1920–1923
- 6 Wireless wars in the eastern arena: epidemiological surveillance, disease prevention and the work of the Eastern Bureau of the League of Nations Health Organisation, 1925–1942
- 7 Social medicine at the League of Nations Health Organisation and the International Labour Office compared
- 8 The Social Section and Advisory Committee on Social Questions of the League of Nations
- 9 ‘Uncramping child life’: international children's organisations, 1914–1939
- 10 The International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation: the Russell years, 1920–1934
- 11 The cycles of eradication: the Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American public health, 1918–1940
- 12 The Pasteur Institutes between the two world wars. The transformation of the international sanitary order
- 13 Internationalising nursing education during the interwar period
- 14 Mental hygiene as an international movement
- 15 Mobilising social knowledge for social welfare: intermediary institutions in the political systems of the United States and Great Britain between the First and Second World Wars
- Index
- Cambridge History of Medicine
Summary
Throughout the nineteenth century the international sanitary order had relied on quarantine and the surveillance of travellers and goods. More than half a century of international sanitary conferences, in all twelve meetings from 1850 to 1912, can be summarised as leading to the establishment of sanitary cordons against all pestilences coming from the East and an attempt to control migration, in particular the great pilgrimages.
The First World War fostered a new type of interest in international health with the recognition of the devastating potentialities of epidemic agents on multitudes thrown together in a giant battlefield. The Balkan experience was crucial in that it exposed millions of men, coming from all countries in the world, to a wide range of epidemic hazards, including water-borne diseases, typhus and malaria.
Two kinds of considerations, political and epidemiological, rendered the sanctuarist view pointless:
the vagaries of battlefields illustrated the similarities of epidemiological conditions across borders and the necessity of co-ordinating national actions in the domain of public health;
health was posited as an important factor in the planning of a future and, it was hoped, better world in a new geopolitical space.
The pacifist wave after the Treaty of Versailles led to the perception of public health as an ingredient of civilisation and a condition of international peace.
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- Chapter
- Information
- International Health Organisations and Movements, 1918–1939 , pp. 244 - 265Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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