Abstract

ZABALA, Juan Pablo  and  ROJAS, Nicolás Facundo. Sanitary, commercial and scientific-technical rationale in vaccine production at the Bacteriological Institute of the National Department of Hygiene, 1913-1944. Astrolabio [online]. 2022, n.29, pp.2-34. ISSN 1668-7515.  http://dx.doi.org/10.55441/1668.7515.n29.35333.

The article analyzes the production of vaccines at the Bacteriological Institute (IB) of the National Department of Hygiene of Argentina (DNH) between 1913 and 1921. During these years, under the direction of the Austrian bacteriologist Rudolf Kraus, the production of vaccines was a central stake of the IB's activities. To this end, we present a reconstruction of the different social and cognitive aspects involved in these developments, such as the selection of products, the techniques used, their distribution and effective application, among other issues.

We propose that it is possible to identify three types of rationalities that guided the development of vaccines, linked to the retribution that these could yield in the different fields or social spaces: a medical-health, a commercial and a technical scientist, as a result of the different expectations and demands that went through the IB.

In methodological terms, the work is based on the analysis of various documentary sources, such as scientific papers and institutional memories of the IB and the DNH, works of professional dissemination or university education of that time, and secondary bibliography of the history of science and medicine.

Keywords : Bacteriological Institute; Vaccines; Vaccine therapy; Rudolf Kraus; Bacteriology.

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