ABSTRACT

This chapter compares Japan and Chile in two focused ways namely: epidemiological change driven by globalization; and the efforts by states to shape the meaning of disease categories, and thereby attempts to control diseases through publicly directed medical intervention and law. It explores the changing physicality and metaphors of diseases, and reveals shared notions of modernity, nationality, and state building. Disease and state attempts to control disease in Japan and Chile demonstrate the distinctive experiences of these two countries, which were indirectly connected and mediated by the powers of the Atlantic World, on opposite edges of a new Pacific World. Subsequent debates incorporated not only medical "best practice", but also questions of national identity and preexisting cultural understandings of leprosy. The public health system that took form during this period thus reflected a growing association between the health of the nation and its geopolitical status.