[Submitting to disease, controlling disease, industrialization and medical technology: the case of tuberculosis]

This article presents an overview of the research work undertaken in France and Algeria on tuberculosis and the application of tuberculosis treatments. Tuberculosis is one of the best medical pointers to social inequality. The disease is seen here as typical of the links between industrialization and health, with regard to the evolution of the epidemiological model and the influence of innovational+ treatments, based on chemotherapy, on the organization of care for tubercular patients, together with the socio-economic and cultural changes that have affected both French and Algerian society during the twentieth century. The first part of the article shows how the epidemiology of tuberculosis tends to vary in accordance with the dynamic evolution of social relationships as industrialization occurs in each country, and how world-wide epidemiological trends are one of the best medical pointers to the North-South divide. The second part of the article is given over to a study of the way in which the application of tuberculosis treatments in both France and Algeria is a function of the organization of the health system in each country, of the status and power of the medical profession within society, and of the impact of technical innovations on the changing forms of care for tubercular patients in both countries. In France, it can be seen that the structure of the system set up to combat tuberculosis in the inter-war years has tended to remain unchanged, despite the opportunities for re-organization of tuberculosis treatment and for making therapy less onerous which have arisen as the incidence of the disease has dropped and antibiotics have been introduced. This resistance to change seems due primarily to the difficulty of achieving redeployment of medical staff, and the inertia caused by the rigid structure of tuberculosis care within the French socio-medical system.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)