German anatomical pathology in the center of Argentine psychiatry: Clinical studies at the Mercedes Hospital (1900-1910)

Abstract

In this article, we explore the development of pathological anatomy in the psychiatric field in Buenos Aires, Argentina, particularly in the Mercedes hospital beginning around 1900. The Argentine government, by means of Dr. Domingo Cabred, contracted German physician Christofried Jakob, through the Ministry of Foreign Relations, to take charge of the Laboratory of Clinical Psychiatry and Neurology at the Mercedes Hospital (1889-1904). To facilitate this work, a laboratory was constructed that was an exact replica of the laboratory of pathological anatomy developed in Germany. This work was critical to cementing the neurobiological school in Argentina and produced important followers of the biological approach to psychiatry. In this article, we investigate a part of the work that developed in this laboratory. Specifically, we focus on the registry of a population of patients who died and were subsequently autopsied in the hospital. We examine the diagnoses that were used to characterize this population and analyze the relationship between laboratory practice and the theory of anatomical pathology during this period. We show that laboratory practices – not just autopsy but also blood tests – were critical technologies to sustain a hygienic diagnostic framework in the hospital. Autopsies demonstrated the causal connection between changes in the anatomical-clinical body and psychopathology and thus, established the psychiatric field as a legitimate branch of medicine that produced scientific explanations for the social problematic of immigration at the turn of the century in Argentina.