Etiología parasitaria y obstáculos epistemológicos: El caso de la malaria en Colombia

Abstract

In this article we show the process that led Colombian medicine toward the discovery and acceptance of the causes of paludism, a disease that still haunts the large hot and humid zones in the country. To carry out this process, a new generation of physicians had to overrule the old miasma theory and accept the vectors theory. In this regard, however, Pasteurian theory was also more of an obstacle than a condition for the emergence of a new research program. As a matter of fact, native discoverers of new parasites were disclaimed by the findings in tropical medicine. Thanks to all of them, nowadays paludism does not belong to the phantoms that pillage in the usual direction.