Abstract
This conceptual essay investigates the idea of paradigmatic rupture and its implications in historical interpretations of public/collective health, where the dimensions of politics and science intermingle. The polysemic and pre-conceptual nature of “paradigm” is clarified, taking account of the conceptual implications, while reaffirming their semantic usefulness. Essential and cumulative ruptures are discussed and applied to the confrontation of the epistemic rupture brought about by district health centers and the goals of the public health reform movement. The difficulty of the collective health paradigm in maintaining its discursive independence is presented, such that the global spread of the discursive matrix of health centers by the Rockefeller Foundation still constitutes the most recent holistic paradigmatic rupture in Brazilian public health.
history of public health; health service reform; politics; preventive medicine
