Modern Age
In the following centuries, public hygiene continued to go through various phases according to the various course of events and the progress of the respective civilization of the empires. In that history, Spain would not be snubbed. There, wise laws on the practice of Medicine have been passed since ancient times, famous schools and academies have been founded for its teaching, hospitals and insane asylums have been established before other nations. Spanish is the initiative in the formation of methodical topographies; Spanish is the initiative of the morberias or quarantines, established for the first time in Mallorca in the year 1471, Spanish is the good organization of the mancebías, Spanish and founded by Isabel la Católica, it is the first military field hospital that existed in Europe, etc.
Germany is the country that surpassed all those in Europe in terms of public hygiene. In 1764 Rau published a little work in German on the need for a medical police regulation in a State. In 1771 Arnold published a Latin dissertation on the suppression and reform of things contrary to public health. In the same year Liebing published another similar dissertation also in Latin. In 1777 Baumer, a professor in Giessen, published the Fundamenta politice medica, cum annexo catalogo commodce pharmacopoliorum visitationi inserviente, a notebook of about 200 pages in 8th grade, very succinct, and for the use of his disciples. Finally, a work by Sussmilch, a Protestant pastor, became very notable, written in German, and whose title can be translated as follows: The order of divine Providence manifested by births, deaths and the increase of the human species. It is a work full of data and important research about the population of Europe. Its author makes several forays into the field of public hygiene and is said to have dealt very masterfully with the issue of luxury as a cause of disease and depopulation.
These are the main books that began to give a special literature to public hygiene as it is understood today. Its authors are all German but all of them must have been surpassed by their compatriot Frank.
Johann Peter Frank") gave birth (1776) in Manheim to a notebook in 8th grade with the title Epistola imitatoria ad erudites de communicandis quc e ad politiam medicam spectant, principum ac leyislatorum decretis. This invitation, which contained the plan of the medical police work that Frank proposed to publish, was read with applause but did not give the expected results since very few scholars sent materials to its author. This, however, began, in 1779, to give birth to his System einer vollstcendtgen medizinischen Polizey which was certainly very celebrated and with which he established the main basis of his reputation. It is an immense collection of laws and decrees taken from all the legislations of the world, both ancient and modern. The author says everything but does not have a great method and is also very verbose. He did not excel in the physical and natural sciences that are so closely linked to the progress of political medicine, nor were these sciences in his time as advanced as they should be so that they could enlighten him in all the details of application that require the help of those. But despite all these imperfections, Frank's work will always be a glorious monument of perseverance, zeal and good will. Public hygiene will always count the Medical police system as one of its richest and most important. venerable deposits.
Given the signal by Frank, several more or less complete treatises have successively appeared. Metzger, Elsuer, Hebenstreit, Husty, Schmidtmann, Scherf, Schraud, Bucholz, Pyl; Rober (Of the interest with which the State must look after the health of the citizens, Dresden, 1806, a small volume in 8.°); Heberl and Jacobi (Medical Police Yearbooks for Bavaria, Landshut, 1810); Augustin (Archives of Political Medicine, Berlin, 1804, 3 vol. in 8th); Kopp (Yearbook of Political Medicine, Frankfurt on the Mein, 1808-1820, 12 vol. in 8th); Knape and Hecker (Critical Yearbook of Political Medicine, Berlin, 1806, 3 vol. in 8th), C. F. Daniel, Remer and several other Germans have continued to cultivate the new field.
In France this cultivation has been promoted by Adelon, D'Arcet, Cabanis, Chevallier, Esquirol, Foderé, Marc, Mahon, Orfila, Parent-Duchátelet, Portal, Ratier, Sainte-Marie, Trebuchet, Villermé and several others. Most of them recorded the fruit of their work in the Annales d'hygiéne, Pública et de médecine légale, a quarterly publication that began in 1829.
Spain, although it counts its main glory in the past, can cite the names of Salvá, López Mateos, Morejón, Ruiz de Luzuriaga, Fabra, Merli"), Ardévol and others whose works, whether less famous or more modest, did not fail to promote the cultivation of public hygiene.