Sciences, Philosophie, Histoire – UMR 7219, laboratoire SPHERE

This theme brings together a dozen researchers who intend to pursue, in collective projects or in their personal capacity, part of their research on the issues of environment, health and disease. As in the past, two main projects emerge. The first is interested in deepening the historical and philosophical dimension of the environment-health relationship. With specialists from different geographical areas for different historical periods, the researchers involved in this line of research can provide the material needed to develop, in the coming years, a comparative study. The wealth and the common will to question a great variety of periods (especially the less studied at present, like the medieval period) and the non-European geographical areas make it possible to rest the question of the breaks which occurred in the relation Man / Environment. A second project brings together several researchers working on the links between health and the environment in a new scientific and social setting, opened up by medical discoveries and new territorial divisions of political power, over the course of the 19th century.

The first project focuses on deepening the historical and philosophical dimension of the environment-health relationship. With specialists from different geographical areas for different historical periods, the researchers involved in this line of research can provide the material needed to develop, in the coming years, a comparative study. The wealth and the common will to question a great variety of periods (especially the less studied at present, like the medieval period) and the non-European geographical areas make it possible to rest the question of the breaks which occurred in the relation Man / Environment. Merhnaz Katouzian-Safadi will address medieval texts in a historical perspective and in relation to scientific thought on these themes. Over the course of history, it will seek the emergence of new concepts on the relationship with the environment and the restructuring of old knowledge on the environment. Florence Bretelle-Establet will continue her work on the study of the perceived links between environment and health, with a special focus on the discourse of doctors writing from the southern margins of China, about a polysemic entity, the gu, "poison, poisonings, black magic ", which, like the zhang " miasmes ", has always been attached to southern lands. Marie Gaille would like to carry out the work she has just undertaken, which is part of the effort to propose a conception of health that incorporates the "anchored" dimension of the human being (in a living environment) into the environment. history of philosophy and its relations with medicine from the Hippocratic corpus and Aristotelian thought. From a perspective in historical perspective, it proposes to highlight different proposals to articulate health and living environment, and finally, to explore the category of "well-being" from the angle of the relationship to the environment, category in a complex and controversial relationship with that of health. Anne-Marie Moulin, in the context of her reflections on the truth and history of medicine, would like to examine the manual of hygiene composed in Arabic under the direction of Clot, director of the medical school of Cairo at its foundation in 1828, and to show the association of an anti-contagionist approach to epidemics in Egypt with a renewal of relations between men and their environment in the middle of the 19th century, which is a good way to integrate the East into the West in the 19th century century and modern medicine in the tradition bequeathed by the Middle Ages.

A second project brings together several researchers working on the links between health and the environment in a new scientific and social setting, opened up by medical discoveries and new territorial divisions of political power, over the course of the 19th century. Gabriel Gachelin proposes to continue his work on Chagas disease by studying the personal archives of Chagas for the period 1915-1925, during which time he was suspected of having increased the importance of a disease experienced as anecdotal by the Brazilian doctors. Valérie Chansigaud wishes to continue her research by studying more specifically the question of the history of the notion of resistance (from insects to pesticides, bacteria to antibiotics), the diffusion in society of these questions, the role of knowledge and the ignorance, of what reveals the parallel between two problems involving different actors. Guillaume Lachenal will continue his research on the history of the emergence of HIV and HCV epidemics in Africa, at the crossroads of virology, social history and the history of the environment, in the framework of several ANR that are still in progress.