“Facts that need no comment”, states the caption of a series of images that illustrate the chapter on vivisection in a naturist handbook published in 1915 in Montevideo, Uruguay (p. 81). It was an encyclopaedic treatise on vegetarianism and natural medicine that offered theoretical and practical articles and included illustrated instructions for doing gymnastics, taking…
Author: Analía Lavin
Mexican Homosexualities and the Distortions of the Medical Gaze
Doctor Omar Durán-García’s research includes the first sex reassignment surgery in the Western Hemisphere, the use of hormones by trans sex workers and the artistic representation of condoms during the HIV-AIDS crisis in Mexico. By examining the intersection of homosexuality, medical technologies and subjective expression during second half of the twentieth century, he shows how…
Holy Water: Alternative Medicine, Science and Spirituality in South America’s Most Secular Country
Analía Lavin // When, in 1878, Luis Curbelo was in an Uruguayan jail for the crime of the illegal practice of medicine, prison authorities desperately requested his help to prevent officers from dying of typhus. Through hydrotherapy and herbal teas, the legend goes, Curbelo managed to cure them and stop the spread.1 He was subsequently…
Homeopathic Balms for Unruly gauchos: Alternative Medicine and Rural Imaginaries in Uruguay at the Turn of the 20th Century
Analía Lavin // What did the nostalgic portrayal of gauchos — nomadic rural workers who wandered through Southern Latin America’s countryside— have to do with alternative medicine? An unusual 1895 Uruguayan publication brought together these different worlds, combining a home remedy manual, a homeopathic catalogue and a collection of short stories featuring gauchos. In this…