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Medical philately, with its diverse themes, is a faithful testimony of the historical events that have affected humanity. Likewise, it allows us to evidence its role as a diffuser of diverse prevention cam paigns carried out to control and eradicate serious infections, together with other achievements of health policy in the child population. Nowadays, the knowledge and collection of postage stamps is an increasingly unusual pastime. On the other hand, sometimes there is a marked historical ignoran ce and lack of appreciation of the effective actions for the control of infectious diseases, forgetting the enormous effect of these on the daily life of the current society. Through the visual testimony offe red by the postage stamps, we review the sanitary, educational, and therapeutic actions destined to control the infections in the pediatric patient, with emphasis on our country. In addition, we discuss the new populations at risk for the appearance of septic episodes. Even today, serious infections and sepsis represent an important public health problem.

In our country, meningococcal disease has a low endemic and high lethality, with epidemic out breaks; some of them of historical character, like the one happened during the first half of the last century. The action of a group of doctors, pioneers in clinical, research and teaching aspects, together with the health personnel that constituted their team, immersed in a successful public health policy, allowed to consolidate the necessary care of the sick child of this serious pathology, as well as many others, thus enabling the development of a structured and scientific proposal, in the light of the knowledge available at that time. Therefore, after 80 years, it is important to review the various clini cal, pathophysiological and therapeutic aspects, in addition to the hospital and social context, of this successful history of the Chilean public health system.

This article deals with the problem of infant mortality in Santiago, Chile, and the development of pediatric medicine during the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Emphasis is placed on the specialists who contributed to organizing the knowledge and practices that structured their professional field. In order to pursue the objective and systematize this new medical field, our analysis suggests the decisive role of the establishment of the Faculty of Medicine and the appearance of coursework dedicated specifically to childhood diseases. Our research is based on various historical sources including the press, medical literature, thesis archives, and the Anuario Estadístico de la República de Chile [Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of Chile]. Likewise, the inauguration of children's hospitals expresses an institutional setting where physicians position their work, put scientific treatments into practice, and most importantly, they become spaces that allow for the reduction of infant mortality.

Starting from the hypothesis that laboratories played an important role in pediatrics becoming an autonomous discipline, this article studies the influence of scientific travel on the appropriation of new methodologies by Spanish pediatricians and child-care experts in the first third of the twentieth century. To do so, it analyzes the travel awards granted by the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas. It describes the scientific geography created by the program and takes an in-depth look at the role of mentors - especially Gustavo Pittaluga (1876-1956) - in this process. In addition to a prosopographical study of the group, it presents three cases that demonstrate the importance of the program in bringing pediatrics into contact with bacteriology, pathological anatomy and biochemistry.

It analyzes the set-up of pediatrics as a specialized medical field in Buenos Aires, between 1890-1920. The article seeks to demonstrate this process as a result of two movements: the delimitation and characterization of children as a particular object of knowledge and intervention, and the institutionalization of some physicians as a professional group that sought to legitimate their specificity within the medicine field and beyond. After contextualizing socially and historically the concerns of medical knowledge on childhood, it explores with detail how the field was constructed, and the associative and academic movement that allowed pediatricians to constitute themselves as a group of specialists that bear a specific expertise.

Here, two papers are presented, which constitute the first reports of surgical procedures in Mexican children performed at the 19 th century. The two publications refer to surgical operations for the extraction of bladder stones. At that time, there was no anesthesia, so part of the description alludes to the suffering of the patients and the operative difficulties. The first case, is referred to as a lithotomy in a 17-year-old girl, performed by surgeon José Victoriano Guerrero in Guadalajara in 1822. The publication is not an academic report, but a pamphlet written as a gift to Emperor Augustin I to celebrate his ascension to the throne. The second work, is a lateral lithotomy in a 5-year-old boy, published by Dr. Luis Jecker in the first issue of the Periódico de la Academia de Medicina de Mégico in 1836., (Copyright: © 2018 Permanyer.)

This article analyzes how the dominance of pediatric psychosomatic medicine in the Argentine medical field caused a transformation in treatments. It shows how, beginning in the 1950s, psy-experts and interdisciplinary approaches found a space at the Hospital de Niños (Children's Hospital) in Buenos Aires; and how the growth of attachment theory made it possible for mothers to stay with their children in hospital. It explains the construction of certain conditions as "family diseases" in a context of declining birthrates. It focuses on the speeches of a key figure, Florencio Escardó, not only because he was hegemonic in the scientific field but because he also played an important role dispensing advice in the media.

The Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition in Peru, is one of the subspecialties of Pediatrics that has experienced one of the most significant growth in recent decades, however, to achieve this seat it should have passed a long way built through the efforts and talent hundreds of doctors for several generations. Its modern history began in 1981 with the creation of the first unit of the specialty in the National Institute of Child Health (INSN), followed by the establishment of the second specialization that contributed to its spread and progress of several hospitals in the country, and many of them now have a doctor of this specialty. Our purpose is to plant the foundations of that story, whose extension go beyond the space that allows us an article.

Between the 19th and 25th April 1914, the First Spanish Congress of Paediatrics was held in Palma de Mallorca under the slogan "Protect the Children". The specialty had broken away a few years earlier from its secular connection with Obstetrics and Gynaecology, both in its teaching aspect as well as regarding healthcare. With the newly created Chairs in Childhood Diseases, in a way this Congress meant the coming-of age and debut int society of paediatrics in our country. Prof. Martínez Vargas, a university professor in Barcelona, was the Chairman, and soul of the congress. There was a need to face a very high rate of infant mortality. The Congress responded to that social and sanitary/health demand with the participation of over three hundred pediatricians, including foreign representatives from Belgium, France, Russia and Latin America. The activities were divided into four sections: Childcare, Child Medicine, Surgery and Health, and accredited lecturers gave master classes on the most pressing issues of child pathology of the time. One hundred years on, what we are today is the fruit gathered by those who preceded us. Some were brilliant figures in paediatrics and others, the majority, anonymous paediatricians. They dedicated their lives, their science and their best smile to child care. The way we were and the way we are. With legitimate pride and satisfaction, it is an honour for the Group on the History of Paediatrics and AEP Documentation to celebrate this centennial commemoration in the framework of the Annals of Paediatrics., (Copyright © 2014 Asociación Española de Pediatría. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.)

Richard V Lee, MD, MACP, FRGS, Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics and Obstetrics, Adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Social and Preventive Medicine. Director, Division of Maternal & Adolescent Medicine, and Director, Division of Geographic Medicine, Department of Medicine, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA, passed away on May 7,2013. His academic degrees and university positions are a vivid testimony of his wide professional interests and capabilities. As a humanist and ecologist, he became involved in a broad range of medical and research activities in the Brazilian Amazon, the Chilean Southern Andes, the African deserts and highlands, India, the Himalayas, and China. His extensive bibliography on ecology, the health status of geographically isolated populations and the role of physicians on cultural and macro environmental factors, has been summarized in his posthumous book "Out of Bounds. Medicine and The Hundred Acre Wood", recently published by the Royal Society of Medicine, London. The Sociedad Médica de Santiago-Chilean Society of Internal Medicine and its journal Revista Médica de Chile are indebted to his enthusiastic contributions and advice.

As part of its 100th-anniversary celebration, the Pan American Health Organization has named 12 persons as "Public Health Heroes of the Americas" in recognition of their noteworthy contributions to public health in the Region of the Americas. Over the course of this year, the Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública/Pan American Journal of Public Health will be carrying pieces written by or about these heroes.