MAPPING CHOLERA: MEDICAL THEORIES, GEOGRAPHIC THOUGHT AND CARTOGRAPHY IN THE 19th CENTURY

• Autor(a) principal: Rios, Gabriela Leal
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Hygeia (Uberlândia)
• Texto Completo: https://seer.ufu.br/index.php/hygeia/article/view/70642
• topic: Cartografia médica; Teorias médicas; Cólera; Medical cartography; Medical theories; Cholera

This article aims at, through a comparative analysis between different maps of cholera outbreaks in the 19th century, discussing the ways in which cartography was inserted in the process of geographic thought related to diseases and their causes in the period. It is proposed to compare a certain number of chosen maps that demonstrate that cartography, in addition to being a way of highlighting areas in which there were a greater or lesser number of cases of the disease, directly participated in the defense of a certain theory regarding its cause, depending on elements chosen to be represented on the maps. In this sense, in a period in which the causes of cholera were not yet clear to medical knowledge, the latter is associated with a geographic argument, combining different spatial characteristics with specific cases of the disease, in the search for a possible explanation as to its origin. In addition, comparing the maps allows us to access an understanding of the role of map production along geographic thinking associated with outbreaks and their particularities, which may acquire an illustrative function of the thinking process, or as an active tool of comprehension, in order to make visible associated information that would allow some clarification about the spread of the disease in space.