50 years of the Sociedad Uruguaya de Historia de la Medicina through documents 1970-202

Abstract

The Board of Directors of the Uruguayan Society of History of Medicine (SUHM) has appointed me to represent it when commemorating the fifty years of its foundation.

On the occasion of its fortieth anniversary in 2010, I was also entrusted with telling the history of the Society. Ten years later, the lone survivor of the initial group, I return to that story.

There are fifty years in the life of a Society with a cultural purpose, the history of a science or an art: medicine and related branches. Society far from any economic, political or union interest.

This history has been made on the basis of preserved documents, circulars, programs, posters, letters and photographs. For years I preserved this material and organized it chronologically, which today allows me to reconstruct the evolution of the Society, its sessions, year by year with reasonable fidelity.

It surprises and gratifies, after fifty years, the impressive material disseminated within it and the enormous tribute it has made to the history of health and illness in Uruguay.