Resumen de History and social sciences as medical research tools. The SILICOSIS Project and the investigation of the pathogenic effects of dust
Paul André, Catherine Cavalin, Michel Vincent
The article presents a research on the potential role of silica dust in association with a range of systemic idiopathic diseases (sarcoidosis, systemic lupus, systemic scleroderma, rheumatoid arthritis,...). In this interdisciplinary project, the recourse to history helps coordinating a medical knowledge which is fragmented; a) between disciplines (pulmonology); b) between specialist from the various diseases involved; c) between occupational and environmental diseases. History and the social sciences also help to understanding the "agnotological" processes of ignorance, forgetfulness and non-stabilization of knowledge. Collaboration with historians transforms, literally, the way how physicians question these diseases, whose risk factors are so transversal and heterogeneous that they become hardly visible.
