Autore
Zampieri, Fabio

Titolo
Medicina e darwinismo fra 1880 e 1930: il darwinismo medico
Periodico
Medicina & Storia (Online)
Anno: 2007 - Volume: 7 - Fascicolo: 13 - Pagina iniziale: 121 - Pagina finale: 147

The last ten years of the twentieth century saw the beginning of a broad debate about the application of the theory of natural selection to the theory and practice of medicine. The evolutionary biologist George Williams and the psychiatrist Randolph Nesse were the main protagonist involved in the founding of this school of thought . This paper presents the hypothesis that contemporary Darwinian medicine proposed by these two American authors had an important historical precedent, medical Darwinism, which developed, particularly in UK, between 1880 and 1930. I have chosen to define this first period as medical Darwinism, as although both schools of thought address the same themes and concerns, they differ in two fundamentals aspects. First of all, medical Darwinism was a more diverse and multi-layered approach than contemporary Darwinian medicine. In the second place, medical Darwinism saw disease as an aspect of organic variability which was quite separate from natural selection, while contemporary Darwinian medicine has always endeavoured to find the effects of natural selection in the creation and hereditary maintenance of pathological characteristics. This paper tries to reconstruct the main characteristics of medical Darwinism in relation to three fields: predisposition to disease, disease of civilisation and infectious disease.



SICI: 1828-6224(2007)7:13<121:MEDF1E>2.0.ZU;2-I
Testo completo: http://www.fupress.net/index.php/mes/article/download/10383/9589
Testo completo alternativo: http://www.fupress.net/index.php/mes/article/download/10383/9657

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