Tuberkulose: Kampen mot bekjempelsen
Abstract Traditionally, the turning point in the fight against tuberculosis is perceived as Robert Koch’s description of the bacterium in 1882. In Norway, the legislation from 1900 has been interpreted as a breakthrough. However, how was tuberculosis understood by doctors in Kristiania i...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | Norwegian Bokmål |
| Published: |
Scandinavian University Press
2019-01-01
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| Series: | Heimen |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.idunn.no/heimen/2019/01/tuberkulose_kampen_mot_bekjempelsen |
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| Summary: | Abstract
Traditionally, the turning point in the fight against tuberculosis
is perceived as Robert Koch’s description of the bacterium in 1882.
In Norway, the legislation from 1900 has been interpreted as a breakthrough. However,
how was tuberculosis understood by doctors in Kristiania in the
latter half of the 19th century? As it appears in Norsk
Magazin for Lægevidenskaben – the country's most important
medical journal – the term was far from unambiguous and precise.
During the period 1840-1900, three forms of understanding dominate:
tuberculosis as hereditary, something which arose spontaneously
from imbalance or as a disease mediated through infection. Throughout
the period, tuberculosis was absent in the journal's infectious
disease tables. Furthermore, the effective fight against the disease
met resistance. Opposition expressed itself through liberal arguments:
measures were terrorism and threats to personal freedom. The opposition
to fighting tuberculosis was also based on scepticism towards bacteria
as pathogens. There are grounds for claiming that “tuberculosis”
did not exist in Kristiania – a parallel to Bruno Latour’s pointing
out that Pharaoh Ramses could not have had tuberculosis, despite
the fact that French doctors recently have detected the disease
in his mummy. The Egyptians did not know tuberculosis 3,000 years
ago. |
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| ISSN: | 0017-9841 1894-3195 |