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Well before becoming a famous politician, Camille Laurin was a physician dedicated, in particular, to supporting and modernizing the practice of psychiatry in French-speaking Quebec. More specifically, in 1961, he helped establish the Bédard Commission whose report transformed the organization of mental healthcare in Quebec. Long before this feat, however, the young psychiatrist had multiplied strategies to push a reform of the provincial psychiatric system, going as far as becoming an historian of medicine. Between 1956 and 1961, he published a series of historical papers focusing on doctor-patient relationships and aiming at importing French psychiatric concepts to Quebec. This paper looks at this unique editorial initiative and how it used medical history as a lever for social transformations.

Patients in Quebec can legally obtain medical assistance in dying (MAID) if they are able to give informed consent, have a serious and incurable illness, are at the end of their lives and are in a situation of unbearable suffering. Since the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2015 Carter decision, access to MAID, under certain conditions, has become a constitutional right. Quebec physicians are now likely to receive requests for MAID from their patients. The Quebec and Canadian laws recognize a physician’s right to conscientious objection, but this right is contested both in the medical ethics literature and in the public sphere. This paper presents the results of a qualitative study conducted with twenty Quebec physicians who did not integrate MAID into their medical practice, either because they were opposed to or deeply ambivalent about MAID. The interviews aimed to explore the reasons – religious and secular – for opposition to or ambivalence towards MAID. The secular reasons given by participants were grouped into four main categories: 1) the ends of medicine and professional identity, 2) the philosophy of palliative medicine and resource allocation in palliative care, 3) benevolent paternalism, the “good death”, and the interests of future selves, 4) the risk of a slippery slope and the protection of vulnerable people.

Keywords: aide médicale à mourir, euthanasie, objection de conscience, éthique médicale, identité professionnelle, croyances religieuses et séculières, medical assistance in dying, euthanasia, conscientious objection, medical ethics, professional identity, religious and secular beliefs

Research framework: Using the theoretical frameworks of quality of life and the sociology of technology uses, this qualitative article explores the consequences of lockdown following the COVID-19 pandemic among Spanish students enrolled at the University of Salamanca. Objectives: This article analyzes the impact of lockdown on the quality of life of university students in different spheres, such as residential, mental health, diet, alcohol and drug consumption, physical exercise, use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), academic work, financial repercussions and coping strategies. Methodology: Exploratory interviews were conducted with 12 respondents (6 male and 6 female students) enrolled at the University of Salamanca on the impact of lockdown in the different spheres of life. The transcripts were coded and thematically analyzed to identify the salient dimensions, convergences and differences in the students’ experience. Results: This study allowed us to identify the positive and negative repercussions of lockdown following the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of life, to identify the repertoire of reactions to this extreme event in the different spheres of life, and in particular in the use of information and communication technologies at the social and academic level. Conclusions: Our analysis allows us to conclude that the lockdown was not always a problematic period, but that it allowed the exploration of existential issues and new behaviours likely to contribute to personal development. Contribution: This article contributes to the research on COVID-19 and university students from a qualitative perspective that is still not widely used in the growing literature on the pandemic.

AbstractThe framework for health policy in France is now place-based, and the regional level is considered the most relevant for implementing policies. After 10 years, the principal challenge for the years to come seems to be the integration of all relevant actors of the health system, and particularly the doctors, into the health policy of each region. An analysis of the locational strategies of family doctors shows that they have an individual approach to care with no geographical dimension. In the future, then, only an alteration in models of professionalism will lead to the successful involvement of doctors in place-based health policies. An analysis of the working of health networks reveals collective learning developing within them as well as the difficulties of getting beyond existing notions of professionalism when no alternative model exists.

According to many authors, 19th century translators were responsible for the entire translation project, from choosing the author and source text to finding a publisher. In some cases, authors accused translators of highjacking their work, as when Darwin refused the translation of his theory of evolution by Clémence Royer. An hypothesis could be that, in a practical field such as surgery, where texts circulate techniques rather than revolutionary theories, the translated text consists essentially in the transfer of factual data from the source to the target text. A detailed analysis of Lister's writings about the antiseptic principle, translated by Brussel-born Gustave Borginon (1882), is more nuanced and reveals a “functional” fidelity that preserves the entire methodology of the antiseptic method. However, references to the intellectual filiation between the antiseptic principle and germ theory are strongly attenuated. Also, Lister's convictions are noticeably downplayed in the translated text. Nevertheless, a number of clues suggest that Lister knew about these modifications, which would foster the acceptance by reluctant French surgeons of an innovative and efficient method.

Keywords: Joseph Lister, XIXe siècle, traduction médicale, histoire, antisepsie, Joseph Lister, 19th century, medical translation, history, antisepsis

The career path of foreign-trained professionals wishing to enter a regulated profession is fraught with obstacles. Our analysis focuses on the case of French physicians who arrived in Quebec under the Quebec-France Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA). In this article, we describe the role of the various institutions involved in the prior learning assessment of French physicians. These institutions seek to facilitate professional mobility while fulfilling their public protection mandate. In this environment, obtaining a permit to practice is complicated, despite the existence of the MRA and particularly due to the multiplicity of institutions and actors.

Keywords: professionnels formés à l'étranger, reconnaissance des acquis, profession réglementée, Québec, France, mobilité professionnelle, foreign-trained professionals, prior learning assessment, regulated professions, Quebec, France, professional mobility

Since the Women's Revolutionary Law issued by Zapatista women on the cusp of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN)'s armed uprising in 1994, the participation of indigenous women has significantly increased. Since the candidacy of Maria de Jesús Patricio Martinez in the 2018 Mexican presidential elections, there has been today a growing participation of women activists-healers in the National Indigenous Congress. Putting forward anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal claims, these defensoras-sanadoras are investing in a preponderant way within the indigenous movement fighting for indigenous people autonomy and against the global development model. In this article, the author addresses the feminine and antipatriarchal dimension of the ethic of care practiced by indigenous activists-healers around sanation as part of their social mobilisations to defend their territories and indigenous people autonomy in Mexico.

Keywords: éthique du, femmes autochtones, Mexique, participation politique des femmes, savoirs autochtones

Through a comparative analysis of two contemporary autopathographies, Hors de moi [Out of Myself] (2008), where the French philosopher Claire Marin testifies to her experience with chronic pain, and Jardin Radio (2022), where the Quebec author Charlotte Biron recounts her years of operation and convalescence for the treatment of jaw cancer, this article challenges a certain tendency of the medical and health humanities to instrumentalize literature in service to therapeutic, ethical and political objectives that are not necessarily its own to pursue. As a counterpoint to this wish to police the literary, even to smooth out discursive rough edges that are overly chaotic, violent or negative, this article proposes to highlight not only the part played by an anger inseparable from the experience of chronic pain and illness—following the two authors—but also a useless dimension of literature which, even if it fails to cure, nevertheless manages to accompany the sick in the silence, suffering and monotony of their solitude, a dimension whose genuine echoes are difficult to perceive.