Policing hearts of darkness: aspects of the international sanitary conferences.

Internationalism became an important feature of medicine and medical science during the second half of the nineteenth century. Internationalism emerged in a climate of nationalism and the latter sometimes affected cooperation, especially after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and the increased imperialism of the last third of the century. Against this backdrop, the International Sanitary Conferences, beginning with the first one in Paris in 1851, attempted to provide guidelines to control the spread of disease, especially cholera and plague. Quarantine was seen as a central feature of disease control, but it remained a controversial measure, since it disrupted trade and inhibited freedom of movement. Most of the early Sanitary Conferences failed to reach agreement, but by the early twentieth century, a broader series of control measures began to be effected, as knowledge of the mode of spread of infectious diseases was achieved.