Infancia, género y medicina. Un análisis histórico de los discursos endocrinológicos sobre el síndrome adiposo genital en Buenos Aires y Barcelona

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the problematization of the interpretation on obesity and childhood sexuality through a historical analysis of the speeches of endocrinology in Buenos Aires and Barcelona in the 1920s and 1930. We will focus on two stages of a controversy around obesity of boy who articulated knowledge of endocrinology with moral assumptions about families and gender representations. Our goal is to identify how knowledge about sexed hormones available in the international scientific field, in the context of local clinical experiences resignified. Endocrinologists believe that availed themselves of gender stereotypes to read the bodies of their patients, but their performances were also mediated by the interests and the logic of the institutions of which they were part. The relevance of psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires and the importance of the experimental tradition in Barcelona will be central aspects to identify the particularities of each case. Our documentary corpus consists of specialized scientific publications.