[History of public health in Mexico: 19th and 20th centuries]

Abstract

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, its growth accompanied the country's political and social changes. In the early half of the nineteenth century, care for the sick depended in part on religious charity. So-called public beneficial care was later introduced and consolidated under president Benito Juárez (1856) and then continued under Porfirio Díaz (1880-1910). The Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) brought the notion that public-health assistance is the State's social responsibility. Health care and social security are now both part of so-called "institutional medicine," which also encompasses research and teaching on public health. This analysis of public-health care in Mexico examines the question of diseases and their control, the emergence of institutions, and the development of the concept of public health.