Raising Children, Raising the Race: Intersections of puericulture and eugenics in Bolivian medicine, 1910s-1950s

• In Event: Histories of Health, Rights, and Nation in Chile and Bolivia: Resolving “Emergencies” and Negotiating Exclusion and Inclusion in Twentieth Century Nations

Abstract

This paper examines Bolivian physicians’ writings on puericulture—the scientific care of children, from conception to adolescence— and argues that Bolivian physicians promoted puericulture education because of its eugenic value. The scientific confluence of puericulture with eugenics in Bolivia contrasts with its use in other South American countries, where hygienists and physicians advocated puericulture education for young women as a means of preventing the high infant mortality rates that accompanied urbanization. In medical theses, scientific journals and puericulture textbooks, Bolivian physicians explored scientific methods meant to educate women – assigning mothers the responsibility to help decrease infant mortality. In the process, doctors linked their concerns about public health and the health of the nation’s children to questions of race, and to the ongoing debate about the place of the country’s indigenous population in the changing nation.

Author

• Kathryn N Gallien, University of Arizona