MATERNITY, MEDICINE AND HYGIENISM IN MEDICAL MANUALS. MONTEVIDEO SECOND HALF OF THE XIX CENTURY

Abstract

This work proposes to study medical manuals and analyze the idea of motherhood that is configured from the discourses of doctors and hygienists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the new cultural history and with a qualitative descriptive analysis, we seek to resignify the concept of motherhood. The main sources consulted were the medical manuals: Luis Morquio (1916) "Protection of Early Childhood"; Ramón Valdés García (1880) The consultant to mothers. Manual of hygiene and domestic homeopathic medicine of childhood; Adolfo Brunel (1865) Opuscule on hygiene of children; Luis Bergalli (1892) Maternity: Advice to mothers and young wives about education, Alejandro Lamas (1889) Maternology: study of the upbringing, hygiene and education of children; Paulina Luisi (1916) "Some ideas on eugenics", among others. Rethinking the historicity of the idea and practices of motherhood allows us to problematize and see ourselves as a society, from which genealogies the idea of a good mother was configured, and what social place the nurse occupied. In this sense, explaining and visualizing the ideological components of maternalistic discourses by medical knowledge allows us to understand the complexity of these and the new responses they give to society. On the other hand, its incidence and projections in education are exposed. From this perspective, the significant place occupied by the hygienist discourse and the new lay morality is recognized.