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Drs. Eduard Xalabarder Serra's and Conrad Xalabarder Puig's historical archive

One of the medical archives preserved at the Museum is the one known as Drs. Xalabarder’s collection. This dynasty of physicians interested in the field of pneumology starts with Dr. Eduard Xalabarder Serra (Caldes de Montbui 1869-Barcelona 1922), goes on with his son, Dr. Conrad Xalabarder Puig (Caldes de Montbui 1899- Barcelona 1979) and with his grandson, Dr. Eudald Xalabarder Conca (Barcelona, 1931). The archives we discuss below are more related to the professional life of the two first physicians of the family and, in particular, with the background of the fight against tuberculosis carried out in Catalonia since the end of the 19th Century. It is a set of documentation which allows suggesting a whole series of questions related to the history of anti-tuberculosis campaigns undertaken by Catalan physicians through a long period and about which there is not much information available, though matching to Dr. Lluís Sayé’s historical archive on the anti-tuberculosis clinic, stored at the National Archive of Catalonia.

Xalabarder’s historical archive allows studying the origins of the great prevention and fighting campaign against tuberculosis pioneered by the Hygiene Academy of Catalonia, institutionalised since 1904 by the creation of the Patronage of Catalonia to fight against tuberculosis and the first anti-tuberculosis clinic established in the city of Barcelona. The conserved documentation opens lines of research on the tasks developed by these institutions. In Barcelona, for instance, on the search of possible incidences of tuberculosis in homes and the measures taken, on the details of the concession of subsides –by way of food, milk and meat, and in cash- for patients and their families between 1904 and 1910, on the creation of new anti-tuberculosis clinics and on the institutionalisation since 1910 of the so-called Flower Fair or tuberculosis day. The conserved papers on this last subject are extremely important, for they allow evaluating the character of social reformism at that time sprouting from acquired commitments by women from Barcelona’s well-off bourgeoisie. Thus, the archive is an illustration of the activities carried out, of the instructions and regulations enacted by the Patronage and of the transformation of the collection day into the creation of popular subscriptions since 1921. On the other hand, mostly due to the work carried out by the secretary of the Patronage, Dr. Víctor Soley Geli, the archive preserves documentation on the medical activities of physicians in Barcelona on this subject –brochures, clippings, articles, speeches and monographs- and on their attendance to congresses in Paris (1905), Saragossa (1908) and Barcelona (1910). Beyond Barcelona, activities carried out by the Patronage throughout the rest of Catalonia are present as well, such as the establishment of sub-delegations. It is also noteworthy the creation of Torrebonica’s Clinic in Terrassa on 1910, where Dr. Conrad Xalabarder was director, when the process of incorporation of these institutions to the social organization of Caixa de Pensions per a la Vellesa i d’Estalvis had already been achieved. The archive includes as well other questions related to these campaigns, one of which became controversial in those years: accusations made by Dr. Jaume Queraltó Ros against alleged Patronage practices considered as reactionary and discriminatory. The matter acquired a character of professional and social dispute and shook society at the time.