Abstract
In his book, entitled Utopia and published in 1516, Sir Thomas More described an imaginary island with a perfect social and political system, where a fair monarch rules over nice, honest, and well-tempered people. This “place of nowhere,” from the Greek word sou, (not), and topos, (a place), would be heaven on earth; unfortunately, it does not exist. However, throughout history, some heretofore only imagined utopias have become realities: Who, at the beginning of the 20th century, would have believed in smallpox eradication? A goal of a utopia can be mobilizing, especially for visionaries, and the founding fathers of the World Health Organization (WHO), in 1946, were realistic yet visionary, scientific yet humanistic, people.
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Manciaux, M., Fliedner, T.M. (2005). World Health. In: Gunn, S.W.A., Mansourian, P.B., Davies, A.M., Piel, A., Sayers, B.M. (eds) Understanding the Global Dimensions of Health. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-24103-5_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-24103-5_5
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