[On the configuation of the current model of thought on public health in Spain].

From an analysis of medical works on hygiene and the promotion of health from the start of the Modern Age until the present, using Spain as the main example, we attempt to describe the process of formation, and the current configuration, of the perceptual sphere of hygiene and public health. In different sections, we note how the promotion of health--initially from a moral standpoint, and later on the basis of medicine and hygiene, was intertwined with attempts to bring about forms of behavior appropriate to the socioeconomic needs of each historical period. This phenomenon was especially evident when processes of industrialization arose.