Health policy in the Spanish Enlightenment thought. Major theoretical contributions

Abstract

The favorable attitude of Enlightenment thought toward large populations, based on the mercantilist belief according to which as more populous a country is, greater is its ability to obtain wealth and power, contributed decisively to turn health and disease into political and economic problems that required a collective administration. In this century, various European thinkers made several proposals for intervention in the physical and social environment to raise the level of population health, arguing that the implementation of these measures belonged to the political power. Spain did not keep out of this general trend, since many of the Enlightenment thinkers who proposed measures to strengthen the demographic potential of the country had in mind health problems that afflicted the society of his time. These intellectuals considered that State had to carry out certain actions to improve the general standard of health and reduce the incidence of the more lethal diseases. In this paper we analyze the contributions of those Spanish authors whose approaches to this issue were more systematic: Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Francisco Cabarrús, Valentín de Foronda, Tomás Valeriola and Vicente Mitjavila.