Influence of Race in the Construction of Medicine



Abstract

In this research paper, we try to explore the concept of How did nineteenth-century notions of race influence the construction of medicine. While there was a general elision of race from much anthropological and social science research after the 1960s, biomedical fields retained a biological genetic view of the race concept throughout the 19th century. Racial differences in health status had long been documented in the United States- higher rates of man, infectious diseases among African Americans, including tuberculosis and syphilis, were documented during die 18th century, and higher prevalence of essential hypertension among black Americans compared to whites as first noted in the early 19th century. The new gene-centered and "preformationist" world view of the modern evolutionary synthesis provided a useful framework for understanding differential disease prevalence among races. Gene theory suggested that all adult traits, including health and disease, were the result of predetermined genetic source. Therefore, genetic differences in disease susceptibility between the races became the favored explanation for health disparities in biomedicine.

Table of Contents

Abstract2

Thesis Statement4

Introduction4

History and Background4

History of Anthropology5

Views of Various Anthropologists6

Historical Construction of Race9

Discussion11

Racial Disparities in Health12

Racial Health Inequalities13

Classical concept of race14

Prevalence of Diseases According to the Race17

Variations among groups21

Recommendation23

Conclusion24

End Notes25

Influence of Race in the Construction of Medicine

Thesis Statement

The classical concept of race is static, imprecise and highly subjective element based. Construction of medicine can be interpreted in difference ways, according to the standards used, who uses them, and even the time and place of determination. This was mostly associated with race in the past centuries.

Introduction

From the nineteenth century and to this day many men of science and letters based support and the division of humanity into a number of races, heavily increasing attempts to locate each human being from a particular group of elements, such as the color of the skin, face shape, hair type, color of eyes, lips type, body proportions, and so on. Thus, began the development of a catalog of human, physical variations across the planet, and there is a myriad of classifications, essentially typological, supported the view that all participating members of a race of its essence and have their typical characteristics. Until the middle of the last century, most anthropologists were clinging to the typological criterion, and even their own textbooks of physical anthropology placed carefully points out the boundaries of the human race and name them.

History and Background

This current debate over the epidemiology of health disparities reflects long-standing disagreement around the meaning of the race concept in science. Throughout much of its history anthropology was at the forefront of the discourse, playing pivotal roles in both the construction and challenge of the scientific race concept. While the discipline of anthropology largely abandoned race as a suitable topic of scientific research in the mid 19th century, the contemporary health disparities storm is reprising the need for a critical anthropological perspective on the topic of race. As experts on what race does and does not represent, anthropologists are in a position, to make ...