Sexology, Hormones and Medical Experiments in the ‘Latin Atlantic World’: Local Power and International Networks, c. 1926-1950, Dr Chiara Beccalossi.

Part of the Centre for Medical History seminar series at University of Exeter

All welcome.

Abstract:

In 1926, Nicola Pende, one of the most important Italian fascist scientists, founded the Institute of Biotypology, a eugenics organisation. This Institute originally aimed to screen the entire Italian population and to study its ethnic composition and state of health. However, it soon came to serve other purposes, including a modern management of sexuality. It promoted sex education and offered advice relating to marriage. It also evaluated the racial unions that would produce ‘fit’ offspring in the long term and treated infertility and impotence with hormone therapies. It attempted to cure ‘sexual deviancies’ such as homosexuality through opotherapy (the treatment of disease with extracts made from animal endocrine organs), phototherapy (the stimulation and inhibition of internal gland secretions through x-rays), treatments requiring climate and dietary changes, and psychotherapy. In the ‘Latin world’, similar institutes were founded in the interwar period, such as the Argentinian Institute of Biotypology, the National Institute for Identification in Brazil, and the Institute of Experimental Endocrinology in Spain. This paper explores the practices of medical doctors from southern Europe and Latin America who employed hormone treatments to normalise ‘sexual deviants’ such as homosexuals in the interwar period. It shows how, in the ‘Latin Atlantic world’, hormones became central to understanding and modifying sexual behaviour and how sexology, eugenics and endocrinology were intertwined.