[The Unión Médica Hispano-Americana (1900) and its contribution to scientific internationalism]

Abstract

The Unión Médica Hispano-Americana was founded during the XIII International Congress of Medicine of Paris in 1900. Its main aim was to strengthen the cultural and scientific ties among Spanish speaking countries. The first assembly took place in Madrid in the Spring of 1903. The most interesting paper presented was undoubtedly that of Manuel Tolosa Latour. He suggested creating a Diccionario Tecnológico Médico Hispano-Americano. The society had no continuity and neither did the dictionary. The reasons for this failure must be seen in the absence of economic support by political authorities in Spain and America, the organizational weakness of the Unión and the poverty of its action program, which was imbued with a triumphalist rhetoric, empty of content and highly paternalistic in its relations with the American world.