This article defines global history in relation to the history of medicine and public health. It argues that a global approach to history opens up a space for examining the reverberations transmitted from the geographic periphery towards western regions, which have traditionally dominated modern historiography. It analyzes two medical interventions in the Caribbean in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, showing how these events had profound consequences in the USA. The successes achieved in the Caribbean in terms of yellow fever and ancylostoma control, as well as providing a model for health campaigns in the southern USA, inspired the centralization of public health in North America under the centralizing control of the federal government.
ancylostoma; yellow fever; global history; USA; Caribbean