Carta do editor

Abstract

Dear readers, This past August, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation hosted a symposium in commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the worldwide eradication of smallpox, an unprecedented accomplishment announced at the World Health Assembly on May 8, 1979. The symposium brought a number of protagonists from the Smallpox Eradication Program together to discuss their experiences as well as any lessons they had learned that could be applied to combating other diseases. This issue of História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos features Gilberto Hochman and Steven Palmer's exclusive interview with Dr. Donald A. Henderson, director of the World Health Organization's campaign from 1966 through 1977. We also bring you excerpts from a travel diary written by another campaign participant, Robert J. Wilson, a Canadian who kept notes on his April 1967 trip to Brazil. Palmer, Hochman, and Arbex's analysis of this documental source leads to interesting reflections on the campaign in Brazil, the vaccines used here, and the role played by expert communities in this international endeavor. Our Analysis section opens with a fascinating article by André Luis de Lima Carvalho and Ricardo Waizbort about a figure not well known to us here in Brazil: Frances Power Cobbe, who earned renown in Victorian England as a social militant. Concerns about the ethical legitimacy of certain uses of animals fell on especially fertile ground in that country, which in 1822 had passed a law establishing penalties for the mistreatment of animals. André and Ricardo's article focuses primarily on clashes between Cobbe and Charles Darwin over the use of animals in scientific experiments. What lies at the crux of this article is the relation between humans and non-humans, between science and nature, which brings us to two other articles that examine nature from different angles. In one of these, two geographers from Campinas State University (Unicamp) explore Alexander von Humboldt's notions on the topic and his relation to the genesis of modern physical geography. Antonio Carlos Vitte, philosopher, and Roberison Wittgenstein Dias da Silveira, a hybrid of agronomist, sociologist, and anthropologist, address "postmodern antinomies on nature." As these authors see it, Humboldt developed a new interpretation of nature on Earth's surface, where the concepts of space and geographic landscape were essential, underpinned by a complex interweaving of aesthetic and instrumental influences. Modern physical geography, they argue, was essentially built upon the thinking expressed by Humboldt in his Views of nature and Cosmos. For the authors, the latter book offers current geographic knowledge a scientific and philosophical answer to the physical geography/human geography duality and thus responds to our contemporary need to transcend the confined borders of formal disciplines. José Marcos Froehlich and Celso Reni Braida analyze the notions of nature underlying our current conception of science. After presenting a brief inventory of the ideas entertained about this polysemic co...