Euphemisms for hunger: know doctor, infant mortality and malnutrition in Colombia, 1888-1940

Abstract

This article analyzes the medical discourses during the period 1888-1940 on infant mortality in Colombia. Relations between malnutrition, morbidity and mortality are one of the most important problems of Colombian medical-hygienist field. Medical objectification of these relationships involved hygiene, germ theory, childcare, eugenics and modern pediatrics. This knowledge produced nuances in the etiology of infant mortality and in medical explanations of epidemiological profiles of the first four decades of the twentieth century. Here, a contribution to the history of the relationship between malnutrition, morbidity and mortality in Colombia is presented.

Keywords

• infant mortality
• history of childhood
• malnutrinition
• eugenics and childcare
• Colombia
• 20th century