Rubio y Galí y su "Clínica social" de 1899: precedente de una Sociología Clínica

Abstract

Clinical Sociology is the name of a relatively young proposal in social sciences. The term is attributed to the sociologist and physician Louis Wirth, a member of the Chicago School of Social Sciences (in the early twentieth century), who incorporates this denomination in his 1931 article "Clinical Sociology" (American Journal of Sociology). He made a visual tour that investigates the origins of this proposal and locates another scientific article, also coming from a physician of the so-called 'humanists', who advances in 32 years Wirth's explicit allusion to a "Clinical Sociology ", and we think it deserves to be rescued. The author is Federico Rubio y Galí, an important physician born in Cádiz (Spain) in 1827, the promoter of the Revista Ibero-Americana de Ciencias Médicas, and very committed to a holistic-comprehensive perspective, in a time not precisely favourable to 'critical' positions such as this professional represents. Although in a relatively marginal and censored way, at that time there was also a worry about social problems, about "endemic social illnesses", in Rubio and Galí's words: "caciquismo", "anacronopatía", "dominación" or "heteropatía". We will present this inaugural terminological suggestion of Rubio y Galí in its production's context: from the medical profession and from the 'humanist' point of view. Starting from there, we recover not only the term (the 'letter') but also the intention (the 'spirit') and its connection with 'Clinical Sociology'.