[In search of puerperal madness in Argentina]

The aim of this paper is to identify cases and scientific works about "puerperal madness" between 1850 and 1940 in Buenos Aires. The gradual installation of the device of maternities in the Argentina, and especially in the city of Buenos Aires, was not exempt from difficulties, in the medical boarding of the pregnant woman and parturient as well as in the cultural conception of the mothers. This fact presupposes an increase of the phenomenon called "puerperal madness" in the moment where the displacement of the act of giving birth in the house to the hospital takes place. Certainly, the clinical fact of the "puerperal madness" exceeds to the historical social context, and in this way appear all the psychopathologies related to the pregnancy, childbirth and the puerperal fevers. We also must take in account the influence of the medical speech about the feminine body and his translation to a scientific and institutional speech never before experienced in Argentina.