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British Medical Bulletin 69:167-177 (2004)
British Medical Bulletin, Vol. 69 © The British Council 2004; all rights reserved

Public health as culture. The social construction of the childhood lead poisoning epidemic in France

Didier Fassin

Centre de recherche sur les enjeux contemporains en santé publique (Cresp), Inserm–Université Paris 13–Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Bobigny, France

Correspondence to: Didier Fassin, Cresp, 74 rue Marcel Cachin, 93 017 Bobigny Cedex, France. E-mail: dfassin@ehess.fr

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.


   Introduction
 
What is public health? Since 1928, when the question was first asked to the participants of a symposium held by the American Public Health Association, it has received many answers. The purpose of this paper is not to propose an additional definition, but to analyse how public health is socially constructed and produced. Instead of prescribing what it should be, I will describe it as it is. More precisely, I want to show that it is a human activity which transforms natural phenomena into cultural facts. In order to defend and illustrate this point, I will present a case study on the history of lead poisoning in France.

In 1981, a team of paediatricians at the Edouard Herriot University hospital in Lyon, with toxicologists from the Alexis Carrel Faculty of Medicine, published an article entitled ‘Lead poisoning revealed by severe encephalopathy: pica does exist in France’ in the journal Archives . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   Naturalizing objects
 

   Culturalizing subjects
 

   Conclusion
 

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