Gabriel Miró and the endocrine individuality

Abstract

During the course of his literary career, Gabriel Miró (1879-1930) dealt with numerous diseases and medical matters in his fiction. One of his greatest concerns was the theme of human individuality and oneness vis-à-vis the multicellularity of the human body and the plurality of all living things, which he examined in depth in Razón y virtudes de muertos (1914), now part of his novel Libro de Sigüenza (1917). In this work he discussed the possible effects of an experiment by a Chicago pysician, who treated insane women by injecting them with an extract prepared from glands from the corpses of sane persons. Miró spoke of the ramifications of such treatment on the personality of the individual, meditating on the hormonal «Brave New World». His criticism must be understood in the context of similar experiments carried out by doctors and writers of fiction, including Cajal, Pi Suñer, Zola, and Marañón, with whose wirks Miró was acquainted.