Manuel Zapata-Olivella's Medical Dialectics: Renewed clinical thinking and social medicine

There is scant information regarding the author Manuel Zapata Olivella, who obtained a Doctor of Medicine and Surgery degree from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in the mid-twentieth century. Although his dissertation for obtaining the degree was defended in 1949, it remains unpublished, indicating that this document could expand the author's contributions in a relatively underexplored area: scientific medical writing. Moreover, while literary critics see the influence of contemporary social medical philosophy in Zapata Olivella's work, he is not acknowledged in the writings of thinkers associated with that movement in Latin America. Upon retrieving the dissertation from the historical archives of the Gabriel García Márquez Central Library at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and subsequently analyzing its form and content, it was determined that it is a scientific essay aimed at reformulating social medicine discourse through a dialectical framework, thereby reevaluating contemporary medical practice, an objective that remains pertinent today. In view of the foregoing, the objective of this reflection article is to describe the main characteristics and perform a thematic analysis of the unpublished essay by Manuel Zapata Olivella, entitled Dialéctica Médica, while discussing the potential contributions of his dialectical approaches to Latin American social medicine to reformulate clinical medicine.