Revista Ciencias Biomédicas (Jun 2014)
MEDICAL AND LITERARY ASPECTS OF THE HISTORY OF THE FILARIASIS BY Wuchereria Bancrofti IN CARTAGENA AND COLOMBIA
Abstract
Description exists in the Colombian medical words of a disease that had high prevalence in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, since the 16th century until half of the 20th century. The filariasis by Wuchereria bancrofti due to the impacting clinical symptoms that it caused, it was thoroughly described and considered. Medical documents and travel chronicles describe to the patients and the personal and social impacts of the disease, just like the measures that were applied. They were extrapolated to the literature, especially for Gabriel García Márquez, who recreates the disease in three of his works. With own strategies of the medicine and European surgery of the epoch, as well as the contributions and indigenous traditions, it was approached for many years in Cartagena de Indias. In the Colombian medical words of the 19th and 20th century, the approach and the clinical and therapeutic considerations that were realized for then could be observed just like the increasing borders between the empiricism and the nascent etiological scientific treatment. Rev.cienc.biomed. 2014;5(2): 374-381. KEYWORDS History of medicine, Filarial elephantiasis, Wuchereria bancrofti.
