This article analyses a domestic litigation matter seeking to establish accountability for air pollution-related human rights violations. It examines how the judiciary applied national and international law to dismiss the case on procedural grounds. It argues that the domestic case deserves careful reading for a number of reasons that can be distilled into two premises. Firstly, the national legal framework and its respective judicial interpretation impede access to justice for victims of state and/or corporate human rights violations. Secondly, it is essential that the state develops laws and policies in line with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which would allow claimants to focus their argumentation on material, rather than procedural issues relevant to proving the merits of the case.

Recent years have shown that international science dialogue exists at the edge of turbulence and is disturbed by different geopolitical events. The notion of science diplomacy has taken the critical discourse to different levels of actors. Such a discourse exposes the epistemological ambivalence and methodological imbalance of both science and diplomacy in this phenomenon. Current geopolitical conditions have revealed new edges of science diplomacy instruments that spread from “soft” to “hard” practices. Different levels of dialogue and cooperation have shown different examples of resilience and adaptability (or the opposite) to the external turbulence. The phenomenon of regionalisation in science diplomacy is facing criticism from the science community while the current geopolitical situation has dramatically influenced the Arctic science dialogue, as well as governance practices. This commentary discusses particular examples of existing Arctic science diplomacy practices in current geopolitical conditions which are reflected in the Arctic theoretical and practical discourse.

Antony Flew argued for a ‘presumption of atheism’ that intended to put the philosophical debate about God under a light which demands setting the meaningfulness and logical coherence of the theistic notion of ‘God’ before any arguments for His existence are suggested. This way of proceeding, discussing divine attributes before considering the arguments for the existence of God, became dominant in analytic philosophy of religion. Flew also stated that Aquinas presented his five ways as an attempt to defeat such a presumption of atheism. However, Aquinas proceeds in the reverse order, beginning with God's existence before discussing the divine attributes. He does so because he believes that natural knowledge of God must be drawn from creatures. Accordingly, from the Thomist perspective, natural theology is necessary not because it provides rational justification for religious belief in God's existence, but rather as a means to fix the referent for the word ‘God’ (semantic function) and provide an intelligible account of the divine nature (hermeneutic function). We should also acknowledge a correlative hermeneutic function of religious faith. Therefore, natural theology should not begin from a presumption of atheism nor proceed in the way suggested by Flew, because its main intention is not strictly apologetical.

Intermittent fever is a historical diagnosis with a contested meaning. Historians have associated it with both benign malaria and severe epidemics during the Early Modern Era and early nineteenth century. Where other older medical diagnoses perished under changing medical paradigms, intermittent fever ‘survived’ into the twentieth century. This article studies the development in how intermittent fever was framed in Denmark between 1826 and 1886 through terminology, clinical symptoms and aetiology. In the 1820s and 1830s, intermittent fever was a broad disease category, which the diagnosis ‘koldfeber’. Danish physicians were inspired by Hippocratic teachings in the early nineteenth century, and patients were seen as having unique constitutions. For that reason, intermittent fevers presented itself as both benign and severe with a broad spectrum of clinical symptoms. As the Parisian school gradually replaced humoral pathology in the mid-nineteenth century, intermittent fever and koldfeber became synonymous for one disease condition with a nosography that resembles modern malaria. The nosography of intermittent fever remained consistent throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Although intermittent fever was conceptualized as caused by miasmas throughout most of the nineteenth century, the discovery of the Plasmodium parasite in 1880 led to a change in the conceptualization of what miasmas were. The article concludes that the development of how intermittent fever was framed follows the changing scientific paradigms that shaped Danish medicine in the nineteenth century.

This article investigates how World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Halfdan Mahler’s views on health care were formed by his experience in India between 1951 and 1961. Mahler spent a large part of the 1950s in India assigned as WHO medical officer to tuberculosis control projects. It argues that Mahler took inspiration from the official endorsement of the doctrine of social medicine that prevailed in India; even if it was challenged by an increasing preference for vertical, techno-centric campaigns. It shows how, from the outset, Mahler was remarkably hostile towards the highly skilled, clinically oriented doctors, but embraced prevalent ideas of community participation. It suggests that Mahler – although he remained silent on the issue – was impressed by the importance and resilience of indigenous traditions of medicine, despite hostility from leading political figures. In this way, the article attempts to establish links to Mahler’s advocacy of primary health care in the 1970s. A broad approach to health, scepticism toward clinically oriented doctors, preference for simple technologies and community participation, as well as an accommodating attitude towards indigenous practitioners, were all features of primary health care, which correlate well with views developed by Mahler as he negotiated social medicine in India between 1951 and 1961.

This article examines the presence and influence of the work of Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger and existential analysis (Daseinsanalyse) in Spanish psychiatry in the central decades of the 20th century. First, and drawing on various printed and archival sources, it reconstructs the important personal and professional ties that Binswanger maintained with numerous Spanish colleagues and describes the notable dissemination of his work in Spain through bibliographical reviews, scientific events, academic reports, university lectures and translations. Next, it reviews the incorporation of the postulates of existential analysis into the discourse of Spanish psychiatrists and assesses their most elaborate and original contributions to the foundations of ‘anthropological–existential’ psychiatry or the ‘existential–analytical’ interpretation of certain disorders or clinical conditions. And, finally, it tries to clarify the assessment according to which the (inevitable) instrumentalisation of existential analysis in the context of Franco’s Spain first compromised the critical recognition of its true possibilities (and limits) and later contributed to the discrediting of psychopathological research among Spanish psychiatrists.

In February and March 1953, a WHO Visiting Team of Medical Scientists worked in India, collaborating with local medical students and professionals. This article studies the complexities of early postcolonial international health work and the relations between the young WHO and the newly independent countries, from the position of the team’s vice chairman, Norwegian doctor Karl Evang. While the WHO aimed to create dialogue and interaction, also learning from the host country, the article finds that an equal exchange of views between visitors and hosts was not achieved. The topic pertains to discussions on power and influence in international organisations and governance, development and health work, within a South Asian setting. Studying intellectual exchanges between Evang and his Indian interlocutors sheds light on India’s role as both receptive and generative site of ideas and political practice, contributing to broader debates on the appropriation, refashioning and application of political ideas in independent India. Also, at a time of new directions in international health, and considering Evang’s social medicine conviction, an additional question concerns the role of social medicine. The article underlines the existence of multiple, parallel tracks in international health work, and argues the need to portray international health as a complex mosaic, rather than a step-by-step development. The case has relevance as historians endeavour to make international and global history more diverse, as through Evang we capture parts of a broader international involvement of people and nation states in the WHO and its work in the early post-war period.

Our contributions examine the Norwegian Karl Evang's (1901-1981) and the Dane Halfdan Mahler's (1923-2016) participation in international health co-operation facilitated by the World Health Organization (WHO) in India in the 1950s. While Evang’s was a hectic, but relatively short visit as part of a WHO visiting team of medical scientists in 1953, Mahler’s spanned the entire decade on assignments as WHO medical officer to tuberculosis control projects. Mahler’s name should be familiar to researchers of international health as the Director-General of the WHO 1973-88, and for his promotion of primary health care through the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration. Evang, Norway’s Director of Health 1938-72, was also a key figure in international health in the mid-twentieth century as one of the original instigators of the WHO, and a participant in much of its early work.

A core theme is the place of social medicine, both in Evang’s and Mahler’s work, and within the WHO and its navigation of complex postcolonial settings in the 1950s. Investigating cross-regional encounters and circulations of social medicine ideas between Evang and Mahler and their Indian interlocutors as well as international WHO staff members, we ask what the role of social medicine was in international health in the early post-war period. Researchers have found that social medicine had its heyday during the 1930s and 1940s, and that a technology-focused, vertical approach became dominant soon after the war. In contrast, we suggest that continued circulation of social medical ideas points towards a more complicated picture.

This essay aims to situate the emergence of Siddha medicine as a separate medical system in the erstwhile Madras Presidency of colonial India within a broader socio-economic context. Scholars who have worked on Siddha medicine have stressed more on political dimensions like nationalism and sub-nationalism with inadequate attention to the interplay of various (other) factors including contemporary global developments, changes in the attitude of the colonial State and especially to the new promises held by the greater deference shown to indigenous medical systems from the 1920s. If the construction of ‘national medicine’ based on the Sanskrit texts and the accompanying marginalisation of regional texts and practices were the only reasons for the emergence of Siddha medicine as presented by scholars, it leaves open the question as to why this emergence happened only during the third decade of the twentieth century, though the marginalisation processes started during the first decade itself. This paper seeks to find an answer by analysing the formation of Siddha medical identity beyond the frameworks of nationalism and sub-nationalism. Further, it explicates how material factors served as immediate cause along with the other, and more ideational factors related to the rise of the Dravidian political and cultural movement.

The ‘Mind the Gap’ project has created a toolkit for civil society to hold companies to account for their adverse impacts. The toolkit sets out two distinct but interlinked frameworks: harmful corporate strategies resulting in the avoidance of responsibility for adverse impacts, and civil society counter-strategies to overcome these harmful strategies. Both frameworks capture the unique experiences of the Mind the Gap project’s global consortium partners and civil society actors focused on corporate accountability. The project responds to a need to close governance gaps that arise in the context of the current global economic system. It is only by identifying and understanding harmful corporate strategies that civil society can effectively advocate for corporate accountability and the closure of governance gaps.