Disease in the History of Modern Latin America

Disease in the History of Modern Latin America
Author: Diego Armus
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2003-03-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780822330691

DIVEdited volume that takes a non-traditional approach to the history of medicine in Latin America, and emphasizes the cultural and social construction of disease./div

What the heck is hysteria?

What the heck is hysteria?
Author: Claudio J. Chiabai
Publisher: Claudio J. Chiabai
Total Pages: 493
Release:
Genre: Psychology
ISBN:

Hysteria is a disease already forgotten by medicine, which, in spite of this, is still very much in vogue. Its name in various academic circles and, especially, in psychoanalytic circles. However, what is today referred to as hysteria is not hysteria, and what is hysteria does not have that name. This book aims to show the form that hysteria actually took before its disappearance in the twentieth century. It aims to answer a simple question. It aims to answer a simple question: What did what was called hysteria for so many centuries look like? What characteristics did it have that identified it from other ailments? How was it dealt with? What was the cause of it? To answer these and other questions, this book makes a historical journey from the first ideas about hysteria, from the first centuries of medicine to the latest conception of it settled in the famous manual of mental disorders, the DSM. This journey is made with emphasis on the second half of the 19th century, the golden age for hysteria and the intellectual environment from which Sigmund Freud and, therefore, his creation, Psychoanalysis, drew nourishment. As happens with any look into the past, many myths become evident as such and, at the same time, are dissolved by looking at the historical facts that involve them. For example, one can see how the idea that hysterical patients were despised by physicians as simulators is false. Or, it can be seen that Freud was never the first to listen to these supposed patients ignored by physicians or that he was not the first or the only one to consider sexuality to explain hysteria. These and many other myths, such as that patients were treated by provoking them to orgasm, are easily debunked in this book. This book is obviously addressed to anyone interested in knowing, with accuracy and detail, what hysteria consisted of, as well as to those interested in seeing the reality behind the mythical foundations of Psychoanalysis, since it was born out of hysteria and to which it dedicated its existence. In short, this book is a modern treatise on hysteria, intended to answer a simple answer to a simple but complex question: What the heck is hysteria?

Civilizing Argentina

Civilizing Argentina
Author: Julia Rodriguez
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2006-12-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807877247

After a promising start as a prosperous and liberal democratic nation at the end of the nineteenth century, Argentina descended into instability and crisis. This stark reversal, in a country rich in natural resources and seemingly bursting with progress and energy, has puzzled many historians. In Civilizing Argentina, Julia Rodriguez takes a sharply contrary view, demonstrating that Argentina's turn of fortune is not a mystery but rather the ironic consequence of schemes to "civilize" the nation in the name of progressivism, health, science, and public order. With new medical and scientific information arriving from Europe at the turn of the century, a powerful alliance developed among medical, scientific, and state authorities in Argentina. These elite forces promulgated a political culture based on a medical model that defined social problems such as poverty, vagrancy, crime, and street violence as illnesses to be treated through programs of social hygiene. They instituted programs to fingerprint immigrants, measure the bodies of prisoners, place wives who disobeyed their husbands in "houses of deposit," and exclude or expel people deemed socially undesirable, including groups such as labor organizers and prostitutes. Such policies, Rodriguez argues, led to the destruction of the nation's liberal ideals and opened the way to the antidemocratic, authoritarian governments that came later in the twentieth century.