Abstract
In this article we explore the development and consolidation of expert knowledge in social medicine, which was constituted as the intellectual framework of health policies in Chile during the first half of the twentieth century. The central objective describes and analyze the debates and forms of sociability that the doctors developed, characterizing the forms of interference in the public sphere, considered as fundamental parts of a political action that legitimized certain perspectives of analysis and legislative proposals, that were in the base of the debates regarding their definition of the role of the State and the welfare. Through the documentary analysis of initiatives of law, public opinion, expert journals and intellectual sociability, the historical configuration of the technocratic legitimacy in contemporary Chile is approached, which marked a type of intervention of the civil society through the constitution of agendas and proposals for the solution of those problems described as "public".
Keywords:
Chile; experts; social medicine; technocratic legitimacy; field of knowledge.