Medical topographies: Sources for the evolutionary study of territory and landscape

Abstract

This research delves into the comprehensive treatment of textual geohistorical sources, promoting the procedures that currently advocate the recovery, analysis and opening of scientific knowledge in a transparent and extensive way to the society. Between the middle of the 18th century and the middle of the 19th, some of this colonial spaces produced throughout Europe and in American, medical works (medical geographies or topographies), under the influence of the generalisation of hygienist theories in urban planning and society as a whole. These works, and their correct study and analysis, are enormously valuable collections of information and documentation for the knowledge of the urban and rural spaces of the time.

Keywords

• geohistorical sources
• health
• medical geography
• medical topographies
• territory