Focusing on concepts taken from critical geography, this article re-examines the spatial notions that were incorporated by the public health field between the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Based on a review and systematization of intellectual production within the field of medical geography, this time span is broken into periods. We begin with a presentation of Finke's work (1792) and then move on to analyze the nineteenth century, when geography and medicine became scientific disciplines. The concept of space as a physical environment, with human action abstracted out, took hold within geography, while the biological-individual paradigm prevailed within the field of medicine. The text discusses the implications of the public health field's decision to embrace the geographic notions of determinism, type of life, and human ecology, and describes the contributions of Max Sorré and Pavlovsky. It also looks at the International Geographical Union's 1952 creation of a Commission on the Medical Geography of Health and Illness and analyzes the emergence and coalescence of the 'new geography'.
space; medical geography; history of public health