Modos de interpretar y actuar ante los trastornos psiquiátricos en Argentina del siglo XX: las historias clínicas como fuentes

• In Event: Histories of Psychiatry in Latin America: New Trends

Abstract

This paper addresses the methodological challenges of employing patient records to better understand how clinical practices developed and changed inside the very institutions where psychiatry first developed. Addressing this problem allows historians insights into a wide range of facets of hospital life, including administrative and clinical practices and attitudes, the personal trajectories of both patients and doctors, and the relationship of medical theory to daily clinical practices. Medical records present an invaluable tool for the historian of psychiatry, but there are many methodological and ethical issues that the scholar must consider in order to use the sources effectively.

This paper considers the case study of the medical records of female chronic patients who had been admitted to the Hospital Esteves Lomas de Zamora in the Province of Buenos Aires (Argentina) between 1908 until 1971. I demonstrate that to use these invaluable and rare sources effectively, the historian must employ a methodology that considers both the clinical records and a wide array of parallel, non-hospital sources, including print media, medical journals, theses, and medical textbooks.

Author

• Alejandra Golcman