MEXICO’S INSTITUTE OF HEALTH AND TROPICAL DISEASES, 1939-1965

Abstract

In 1939, Mexico inaugurated the Instituto of Health and Tropical Diseases, a center devoted to conducting scientific research on the many technical-sanitary problems that were affecting the country, especially a series of diseases that carried the denomination “tropical” which thrived in the conditions of high heat and humidity characteristic of the world‟s tropical areas: malaria, leishmaniasis, hookworm (ancylostomiasis), river blindness (onchocerciasis), Chagas disease (trypanosomiasis), and dengue. The Instituto concentrated laboratory, clinical and social research in one center and during its fifty years of existence was at the vanguard in integrating research teams in protozoology, helminthology, entomology, pathological anatomy, bacteriology, pharmacology, chemistry, epidemiology and statistics. Research there focused on topics of concrete utility, preferentially ones that could have an immediate impact, for it participated actively not only in studying those afflictions but also in combatting them. Based, above all, on the Institute‟s own journal –Revista del Instituto de Salubridad y Enfermedades Tropicales– which covers the Institute‟s first quarter century (1939-1965), this article seeks to explain the conditions that led to the creation of a center that specialized in research in the field of public health. It also examines the discussion that arose around the term “tropical diseases”, explores the topic of experimentation with humans, advances the analysis of the Institute‟s work during that quarter century, and emphasizes the importance that history may hold for understanding some current problems in public health. The article concludes that the Institute did not attend exclusively to these tropical maladies, but also studied many other collective health problems of great social impact, and it called attention not only to the biological and geographical aspects of disease, but also to the economic and social conditions that contributed to their genesis.