In the Path of Contagion: history, esthetics and medicine

Abstract

The antivaccinist’s movement, which consolidates in the 1870's in England, fights against the model based on the idea that disease is caused by a specific agent and the conceptions of illness and health derived from it. In this article, we show the relationship between the discourse on medicine and esthetics. We analyse the experience of building up caricature art and the reflections which define the normal and the pathological. We trace a relationship between caricature and disease and also the dogma of continuity of the normal and pathologic in the 19th century.