The history and the great doctors of the past in Chile. The sense of an investigation

Abstract

The great teachers of Chilean medicine are a recurrent subject in the academic production in Chile. In generally deals with an apologetic speech by which one looks to create and to support medical traditions, but with a weak historiographic content. It is not in discussion the doubtless hierarchy of the great doctors of the past, but the orientation of their studies. In this sense the purpose of this article is to begin a historical research around the teachers of Chilean medicine as a way to oppose it to the academic speech. The conclusion emphasizes two characteristics of the doctors of the past: one is that doctors who participated in a strong and developed public medicine at the hospital beginning in 1924 and reaching its apogee with the National Health Service; and also about doctors who were the central part of the university programmes system previous to the 1968 reform.