Abstract
Medicine is one of the world's oldest professions, and the aspiration to health is often presented as universal. However, the history of both prevention and therapy reveals stormy and passionate exchanges between the West and the East (China and the Ottoman Empire), illustrated by the episode of variolization (from the 18th to the 20thcentury ).
In the 20thcentury , the confiscation of modernity by what is sometimes called cosmopolitan or "Western" medicine encouraged the writing of a history of Healing as a history of Reason in progress.
In contrast, in Alma Ata in 1978, the WHO sought to establish a common ground for practitioners of all persuasions, and encouraged comparison, mutual recognition and exchange between cultures.
In recent years, the proclamation of the advent of "global health", unifying the landscape with the prospect of shared promises, has seemed to give the signal for a "universal cure" (Jean-François Carémel, 2020). This ideological evolution has been called into question by, among other things, the failure to achieve the goal of eradicating infectious diseases. Hence the reintroduction of questions about how, for example, in contact with viruses, people in different environments think about and construct their immunity, and manifest their cultural and biological identity.
