USING PHYSICAL GROWTH AS GUIDE OF SPANISH CHILDREN'S HEALTH (1900-1950)

Abstract

Along the first half of the XX Century the studies about human growth were consolidated. These studies had as a starting point the last decades of the XVIII Century and their object was to explain the biological transformations that take place in the first phases of human life. The objective of the present study is to examine the process of incorporation of a group of concepts and techniques into Spanish pediatrics during the years 1900-1950. The aim of these knowledge and methods were to study human growth and in what way this information on growth could be interpreted as accurate indicator for the measurement of levels of health. The principal matters that will be examined are how the evolution of size and weight of Spanish children with regard to other European countries became known from medical texts and the doctrinal analysis put forth with time to explain these differences. Outside of the strictly biological mark, the ideological components keep a narrow relationship with the important contemporary political and social events.