IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB001560681

Hormonal Bodies: Sex, Race, and Constitutional Medicine in the Iberian-American World, 1900--1950 (2013)

University of California, Irvine
Tinsman, Heidi

Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: Advisor: Tinsman, Heidi
Physical Details: 241 pp.
Language: English

Outside Links

Academia.edu

Medicine and race Medicine Public policy Transmission of ideas Hormones Medicine and gender Public health Cross-national interaction 20th century, early Chile South America Spain Ecuador

This dissertation analyzes scientific ideas about sex and race associated with constitutional medicine that circulated between Chile, Ecuador, and Spain during the first half of the twentieth century. Constitutional medicine correlated physical features of the body with mental characteristics based on the notion that both had been determined by the endocrine system. Constitutional medicine classified individuals and populations according to hormone-based categories of body and character in order to evaluate health and susceptibility to disease. Under the banner of public health and social reform, constitutional taxonomies defined racial and sexual differences and anchored them in the physical body. "Hormonal Bodies" examines the impact of constitutional medicine in the Iberian-American world by focusing on three scientific figures: Alexander Lipschütz (1883-1980), an internationally-renowned Chilean physiologist and social scientist; Agustín Cueva Tamariz (1903-1979), a prolific Ecuadorian psychiatrist and literary scholar; and Gregorio Marañón (1887-1960), an endocrinologist and a major twentieth-century Spanish intellectual. By analyzing the work of Lipschütz, Cueva Tamariz, and Marañón, "Hormonal Bodies" demonstrates that constitutional medicine was a transnational discourse used to address specific national concerns about sex and race. "Hormonal Bodies" makes several significant contributions to Latin American history. First, this dissertation underlines Latin Americans as producers of scientific knowledge in the twentieth century. While Latin America has been habitually overlooked by historians of science, recent studies of Iberian-American knowledge networks have only considered the colonial period. "Hormonal Bodies" illustrates the primacy of Latin American scientists in the history of constitutional medicine and the persistence of Iberian-American networks in the modern era. This dissertation also distinguishes constitutional medicine as foundational knowledge of sex and race in Latin America during the first half of the twentieth century. The engagement of Latin American scientists with constitutional medicine shows that racial concepts of the Indian emerged from prior arguments about sex. Finally, while historians of modern Latin America have often portrayed science as a tool wielded by socially dominant classes to pursue predetermined political goals, "Hormonal Bodies" reveals how scientific ideas produce politics rather than simply being applied to them.

...More

Description “Analyzes scientific ideas about sex and race associated with constitutional medicine that circulated between Chile, Ecuador, and Spain.” (from the abstract) Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. . ProQuest Doc. ID 1270811123.

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001560681/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Rodríguez Ocaña, Esteban; Ballester Añón, Rosa; Perdiguero, Enrique; Medina Doménech, Rosa María; Molero Mesa, Jorge; (2003)
La acción médico-social contra el paludismo en la España metropolitana y colonial del siglo XX (/isis/citation/CBB000410654/)

Book Anderson, Warwick; (2006)
Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Phillipines (/isis/citation/CBB000831472/)

Article Agata Ignaciuk; Christabelle Sethna; (2020)
Charters for Choice: Abortion Travel, Abortion Referral Networks and Spanish Women's Transnational Reproductive Agency, 1975–1985 (/isis/citation/CBB671788250/)

Book Fraser, Gertrude Jacinta; (1998)
African American Midwifery in the South: Dialogues of Birth, Race, and Memory (/isis/citation/CBB000771253/)

Chapter Bashford, Alison; Nugent, Maria; (2001)
Leprosy and the Management of Race, Sexuality and Nation in Tropical Australia (/isis/citation/CBB000551314/)

Article Segrest, Mab; (2014)
Exalted on the Ward: “Mary Roberts,” the Georgia State Sanitarium, and the Psychiatric “Speciality” of Race (/isis/citation/CBB001201824/)

Article Alonso, Franciso Gracia; (2012)
Academic Relations between Italian and Spanish Archaeologists and Prehistorians, 1916--1936 (/isis/citation/CBB001210572/)

Book Davidson, Roger; (2000)
Dangerous Liaisons: A Social History of Venereal Disease in Twentieth-Century Scotland (/isis/citation/CBB000101652/)

Thesis Marko, Tamera Lynn; (2006)
When They Became the Nation's Children: The Foundations of Pediatrics and ItsRaced, Classed, and Gendered (Re)inventions of Childhood in Rio de Janeiro,1870--1930 (/isis/citation/CBB001561637/)

Thesis Comte, Julien; (2013)
Syphilis and Sex: Transatlantic Medicine and Public Health in Argentina and the United States, 1880-1940 (/isis/citation/CBB001567442/)

Book Clark, A. Kim; (2012)
Gender, State, and Medicine in Highland Ecuador: Modernizing Women, Modernizing the State, 1895--1950 (/isis/citation/CBB001212798/)

Book Wray, Matt; (2006)
Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness (/isis/citation/CBB001021028/)

Book Randi Hutter Epstein; (2018)
Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything (/isis/citation/CBB966154025/)

Article Kuhlmann, Ellen; (2001)
The Rise of German Dental Professionalism as a Gendered Project: How Scientific Progress and Health Policy Evoked Change in Gender Relations, c. 1850-1919 (/isis/citation/CBB000101535/)

Article Johnson, Ryan; (2010)
“An All-White Institution”: Defending Private Practice and the Formation of the West African Medical Staff (/isis/citation/CBB001230189/)

Article Watkins, Elizabeth Siegel; (2002)
“Doctor, Are You Trying to Kill Me?”: Ambivalence about the Patient Package Insert for Estrogen (/isis/citation/CBB000201123/)

Article Stark, James F.; (2012)
Anthrax and Australia in a Global Context: The International Exchange of Theories and Practices with Britain and France, c. 1850--1920 (/isis/citation/CBB001200700/)

Article Lachenal, Guillaume; (2013)
Médecine, comparaisons et échanges inter-impériaux dans le mandat camerounais: une histoire croisée franco-allemande de la mission Jamot (/isis/citation/CBB001213543/)

Article Thifault, Marie-Claude; (2010)
Les stéréotypes sexuels de l'enfermement asilaire au Québec, au tournant du 20e siècle (/isis/citation/CBB001024900/)

Article Naomi Rogers; (2022)
Radical Visions of American Medicine: Politics and Activism in the History of Medicine (/isis/citation/CBB887764641/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}