From Claude Bernard to Telémaco Battistini: experimental medicine in the birth of the scientific journal of the Peruvian National Institute of Health

Abstract

The Peruvian Journal of Experimental Medicine and Public Health (RPMESP) was first published in 1942 under the name Journal of Experimental Medicine. Since then, it has been the official scientific dissemination vehicle of the Peruvian National Institute of Health, which was founded in 1936. Telémaco Battistini Sánchez was directly involved in both historical events. Based on some passages of his personal history and on the historical juncture of global and Latin American science between 1865 and 1950, we can understand why the term “experimental medicine” is used in the name of said journal. The aim of this article is to describe a series of events in the history of science which started off in Europe and continued in Peru and triggered the decision to give the name ‘Journal of Experimental Medicine’ to a journal that since its inception has published observational studies—more so in recent decades—, especially in the field of public health, while the number of publications of studies in experimental medicine has drastically decreased.