Los Alpes Suizos En Las Sierras Cordobesas: El Valle De Punilla Y La Historia Sociocultural De La Tuberculosis, 1870-1960.

Alternate Title

The Swiss Alps in the Sierras de Córdoba: Punilla Valley And The Socio-Cultural history of Tuberculosis, 1870-1960

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2012

Published In

Estudios

Abstract

Before the arrival of antibiotics in the 1950s, rest cure in the Córdoba foothills sanatoriums and boarding-houses attempted to organize vast social sectors’ concerns vis a vis the tubercular sick. These concerns have been in the making throughout the first half of the 20th century, when the anti-tuberculosis campaign became more assertive, fed the fear of tuberculosis contagion, and identified the tuberculars as dangerous sick people. Leaving aside the alternative of mandatory internment, this campaign began to display more subtle initiatives aiming at controlling the circulation of the tuberculars by transforming them into responsible, very conscious and self-controlled sick. This article explores some sociocultural dimensions of this cure alternative based on good food, rest and pure air. Enjoyed by a small portion of the tubercular population, this approach was extremely powerful reshaping not only the general history of the foothills but also modeling the perceptions of tuberculosis by society and culture at large.

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