Twenty Years On: Problems of Historical Methodology in the History of Health *

This chapter aims to distinguish three types of methodological problems: The general problem of the particular prejudices of the historian; the problem of the sources used, of their origins, and their ‘silences’ and the problems specific to a historical study of public health. A historical sociology and anthropology of difference are thus necessary. It is not enough to make a quantitative estimate of the alimentary ration, to stress the imbalance of the diet, to denounce the lack of hygiene in having hospital beds occupied by several patients, and to stigmatise the impotence of pre-scientific medicine. For the poorest and the abandoned a deficient and unbalanced diet facilitated the undermining of health by transmissible disease, particularly in the countryside in the interior of Brittany. Naturally, a history of health that seeks to be precise and reliable leads us to practise an analysis of sources, to gauge their limits, to focus on their vices and their faults.