Abstract
Scientific interest in hysteria began in Mexico at the end of the 19th-century, as the medical profession expanded. The Mexican doctors studied madness, drawing on what was confidently regarded as a firm basis of epistemological knowledge. Using modern physiology they entered a discussion that had begun some time before in Europe. Encountering hysteria, an illness presumed to be caused by ‘over-civilization’, they searched for a universal definition. The doctors tried to impose a unifying concept onto the diverse symptoms of hysteria, and, although imitating European ideas, the discourse became distinctive in its attempts to relate hysteria to science and modernity so that all three would make sense. My interest in this article is the feminine; not a reconstruction of the relationship that medicine established between hysteria and the feminine, but a search for a space within the discourse that deconstructs identity and stereotypes. The feminine appears when the coherence of medical discourse is ruptured and when, to explain the illness, the doctors stop attempting to define it. This eventually occurs when the medical discourse considers the subject as unidentifiable and deceptive.
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Notes
It is impossible to cite here all the publications on hysteria that appeared in Europe between the 17th and 19th centuries. Some of the major works known by Mexican doctors were: Esquirol (1840), Briquet (1859), Falret (1890) and Charcot (1890).
As far as we know, no treatise was written on hysteria in Mexico and no doctor performed a long-term specific examination of the illness. There are scattered theses in the Historic Library in the Faculty of Medicine, UNAM, and some articles published mainly in the most important medical journal of the time, the Gaceta Médica de México (GMM), published by the Mexican National Academy of Medicine. Some works were also published in the Crónica Médica Mexicana, a journal concerned with surgery and therapy.
It seems that no treatise was written in Mexico on hysteria and that no doctor worked on it for any length of time. In contrast to Europe and the United States where, according to Micale (1995) more than 400 works have been written on the subject, hysteria has not been an object of reflection in Mexico.
On the history of science and the relationship between the centre and the periphery, see Fefer (2003), Cueto (1989), Rutsch (1997) and Saldaña (1996). On colonial discourse see Bhabha (2002).
A description of the general consensus among doctors of the time can be found in Cortés (1987) and Viesca (1993).
In the 19th century it is not possible to separate hysteria from the nervous system. See Rousseau (1994) for his theory of a ‘semiotic of the nerves’ as an explanation of modern European culture. On the Montpellier school see Williams (2002).
Porfirio Parra (1854–1912), Student of Gabino Barreda and Professor of Hygiene and Pathological Anatomy at the School of Medicine. Barreda introduced positivism to Mexico.
Malanco may have taken this image from Payot 1894. Like the vitalism of the School of Montpellier, Malanco believed that the nerves could explain everything. Human life, he argued, ‘owes all that it is and whatever it might be to the nervous system’. On Montpellier see Williams (2002).
In his work on perception González Ureña followed the ideas of Esquirol (1840). On medical discussion of perception and pre-presentation, see James (1995) and Bowra (1996).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the University of Manchester for its support in the production of this work, and especially the staff at the School of Art History and Archaeology for their advice. I would also like to thank CONACYT (G37696-H), Mexico, whose help made this research possible.
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Translated by Matthew Train
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Gorbach, F. from the uterus to the brain: images of hysteria in nineteenth-century Mexico. Fem Rev 79, 83–99 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400201
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400201