ABSTRACT
Transnational connections require well instructed experts, common knowledge, and shared technologies. The model of expertise was more technocratic than social. The experts were the real drivers for the efficient functioning of these international networks. Their instruction was a major concern for the League of Nations and the Rockefeller Foundation. In February 1924, the Health Committee of the League approved the creation of a Commission on Education in Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, chaired by the Frenchman Léon Bernard. The commission consisted of seven members, to which was added the dean of Shanghai Medical School in 1930. From that moment, information was collected from national authorities and members of the League wrote reports on the education of public health officers, as well as the work of the public administration, medical faculties, and public education programmes.
This chapter explains the instructive programmes, the agreements between directors of public health schools, the interchange programmes, including information about most European countries, including Germany, Britain, Hungary, the Netherlands, France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Spain, Yugoslavia, and Rumania. Conferences and reports by directors of national schools public health were supported by the League of Nations and the Rockefeller Foundation. As a result, a project for the establishment of an École Internationale d’Hautes Études d’Hygiène [International School of Advanced Studies in Hygiene] was proposed by the French government, although the initiative failed.
