ABSTRACT
Ill children with chronic diseases, such as tuberculosis, have faced difficult lives. Poverty proved a factor in their susceptibility to disease, their abandonment, and their treatment. When public health policies in Buenos Aires shifted from ignoring children to viewing them as victims who needed protection, government agencies, charitable organizations, public schools, and hospitals developed special programs that emphasized both prevention and cure of childhood tuberculosis. Argentine physicians and hygienists supported programs that were similar to those in Europe and the United States. Despite efforts, from 1880 to 1920, diagnosis of tuberculosis remained problematic, health professionals failed to prevent tuberculosis in children, and physicians were unable to cure the disease.
Subject(s)
Child Welfare/history , Poverty/history , Public Health/history , Tuberculosis/history , Urban Health/history , Adolescent , Argentina , Child , Child, Preschool , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , Humans , InfantABSTRACT
Using medical histories and municipal public health reports, it focuses on tuberculous men, women, and children of the working poor in Buenos Aires between 1885 and 1915. Crowded living conditions and an unhealthy working environment increased the poor's susceptibility to tuberculosis. Both public health officials and physicians assumed that the living and working conditions of the labour class encouraged the spread of tuberculosis from their neighbourhoods to those of the elite. The Anti-Tuberculosis League and the efforts of doctors to bring about prevention and cure, which generally mirrored those of the United States and Europe, failed to decrease the rate of death from tuberculosis in Buenos Aires between 1885 and 1915. Medical knowledge was limited, while public health officials had neither the time nor the funds to change a system that was embedded in the working and living structures of the community. The tuberculous poor chose to evade prevention policies and relied on the limited services of sanatoriums, clinics, and hospitals only as a last resort. (AU)