La tuberculose dans l'espace social barcelonais: 1929-1936
- Autores: Celia Miralles Buil
- Directores de la Tesis: Jean Luc Pinol (dir. tes.), José Luis Oyón (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2014
- Idioma: francés
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Olivier Faure (presid.), Manuel Guàrdia Bassols (secret.), Laurent Coudroy de Lille (voc.), Mercè Tatjer Mir (voc.), Rafael Huertas García-Alejo (voc.)
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
« Consumption »,a major concern of the late 19th century, was still a disease associated with misery in the collective imagination of the early 20th century. The present dissertation focuses on consumption in the Barcelonian social space of the 1930s: it seeks to circumscribe the multiple meanings of tuberculosis which emerge from medical discourse as well as from the patients' experience. The discovery of the Koch bacillus in 1882 entailed a redefinition of the fight against tuberculosis, as the bacillus came to be seen as the single cause of the disease. Since priority was given to the eradication of the contagious agent, tuberculosis was more than before associated with dust, unsanitary and crowded environments . From 1929 to 1936, the Catalan authorities in Barcelona concentrated on preventive action, which consisted in the extirpation of the Koch bacillus from housing in some a reas that were precisely identified. Besides the analysis of tuberculosis as a homogeneous social construct, the present dissertation takes the patients' points of view into account. Tuberculosis is a social disease that characterises a group of individuals and isolates them from the rest of society. A focus on individuals who were treated in a network of free dispensaries, hospitals and sanatoriums helps us understand their position in the social landscape of Barcelona at that time : prior to being diagnosed with tuberculosis , the patients had been working and were often marginally integrated to the city's life without being altogether socially isolated. Contracting the disease is what downgraded them to the category of medically treated paupers. More than a common status though, tuberculosis was a personal experience for the individuals struggling against the disease and getting cured. The latter's clinical files provide a bottom -up perspective on medical institutions and on the logics of modern medical discourse. The patients' individual trajectories in the capital of Catalonia further blur the unified and homogeneous reference to tuberculosis, as they give priority to personal concerns over health requirements and over the absolute necessity of the fight against the bacillus, thus revealing diverging contemporary understandings of the fight against tuberculosis .
