title: Incorporation of the health care system in the west.
abstract: A reflection is made, from an interpretative perspective, on the historical evolution of health care in the West. It starts from the moment that this became a way to intervene the sick and an instrument for healing diseases, focusing on original documents and written sources which account for results of historical research, which range from XV century until today. To do this, it tries to understand the health care as an ideographic body of knowledge consisting of five pieces of a puzzle composed by: the state policy of hospitals accumulation implemented in Spain, the accumulation of medical practices in what is currently Germany, the hospital wards in England, the nosological rationality in France, and the US sanitizing machine; all these movements as producers of closely linked health care developments, that are nothing more than collective actions regulated by social norms around health.
authors.affiliation: Social and Public Health and Community Medicine Area, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Libre, Cali, Colombia.
authors.forename: Floro Hermes
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Gomez Pineda
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000639:trends; D005060:Europe; D006291:Health Policy; D006761:Hospitals / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D066262:Social Norms; D014481:United States
keywords: Health care; hospital wards; hospitals accumulation; medical practices; medicalization; sanitizing machine; the West