Eugenesia, salud mental y tipología psicológica del mexicano

Abstract

An account is made of the fundamental principles of legal medicine proposed by the english psichyatrist Henry Maudsley, of the criminal anthropology postulated by the italian Cesare Lombroso and of the anthropologyc school, which were used as cientificity frames to detect, explain and solve mental health related phenomenons by eminent psichyatrist, criminologists and legal doctors of medicine from México, with important influence on the field of public health, between the decades 1930 and 1960. In that project had to do also the evolutionist thesis and the arguments derived from the eugenesic current (racial betterment advocationist), which led to consider such measures as sterilization and even the elimination of individuals considered to be carries of hereditary characters producing patterns of antisocial behavoir, such as wadness and nervious system fragility, then vinculated to criminality, pauperization and prostitution. On the implementation of mental health programs and it’s legal aspects, the participation of the following professional institutions is fundamental: Academia Nacional de Medicina de México, Sociedad Mexicana de Puericultura, Sociedad Eugénica Mexicana para el Mejoramiento de la Raza, Sociedad Mexicana de Neurología y y Psiquiatría and the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias Penales. A review is made of diverse attemps to stablish the psychological typology of mexicans, based on bio-typological and psychosomatic data from evolutionism and eugenics thesis, which even led to the organization of a criminal biology service, to detect individuals considered to be carries o certain hereditary characters which were thought to be the source of anti-social qualified conducts, also vinculated whith diverse mental pathologies such as criminality.