Health, illness, and schools in Argentina: marks of epidemics in the history of a changing relation

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the connections between health, illness and education from a historical perspective, aiming at providing clues for understanding these relationships that, as demonstrated in recent global events, cannot be analyzed separately. Over the centuries, societies have always found different ways of educating their new generations and deal with their health problems. The relationship between education and illness has varied throughout history, but in certain extreme cases, such as epidemics, this relationship intensifies and becomes more evident. Each particular situation affected the educational system and the school institutions in different ways, as it changed the life of teachers, pupils and their families, represented pedagogical challenges, and marked all of them at different levels and had an impact on their futures.This focuses on the marks left in education by certain events that took place during the epidemic since the foundation of the modern educational system until more recent times in Argentina. Such events are the succession of “plagues” from 1870 to 1920 (as the “Yellow Fever” in 1871 and the “Spanish Flu” in 1918) during the modernization processes, as well as the “Poliomyelitis Outbreak” in 1956 during the political struggle between Peronism and anti-Peronism. In both cases, we will try to a) reconstruct the ways in which society and specially school institutions went through these epidemics, b) analyze the close and changing bonds between health and education, which turned the school into a privileged space where that bond was enhanced, and c) present the consequences regarding instruction.

KEYWORDS:

• Epidemics and education
• Yellow Fever
• Poliomyelitis
• Hygienism
• Argentina

Acknowledgement

A first approach on this ideas was presented in Pablo Pineau y María Luz Ayuso, “De saneamientos, trancazos, bolsitas de alcanfor y continuidades educativas: brotes, pestes, epidemias y pandemias en la historia de la escuela Argentina,” in Inés Dussel et al., Pensar la educación en tiempos de pandemia: entre la emergencia, el compromiso y la espera (Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: UNIPE, Editorial Universitaria, 2020).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ Diego Armus, “La enfermedad en la historiografía de América Latina moderna,” Asclepio-Vol. LIV-2 (2002): 41-60.

² Nicolas Arata and Pablo Pineau, eds., Latinoamérica: la educación y su historia. Nuevos enfoques para su debate y enseñanza (Buenos Aires: EDUFyL, 2019).

³ Annie Tobaty, “L’école face à l’épreuve: quelle histoire? Entretien avec Emmanuel Saint-Fuscien,” Administration y Éducation, no. 169 (2021): 15–22.

⁴ The analysis of similar processes, specially educationalisation as a tool of control and stratification in modern societies can be found in Marc Depaepe, Between Educationalization and Appropriation: Selected Writings on the History of Modern Educational Systems (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2012).

⁵ Diego Armus, ed., Entre médicos y curanderos. Cultura, historia y enfermedad en la América Latina moderna (Buenos Aires: Norma, 2002).

⁶ Among the victims was Fanny Wood, a Boston Methodist teacher, one of the pioneers who accepted Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s invitation to practice her profession in Argentina. In 1870, together with her colleagues, she had founded one of the first kindergartens in the country. Although she had moved to the countryside when the plague broke out, like a large part of the population that was able to do so, she returned to the city soon after to take care of the family that had welcomed her when she caught the disease: see Alice Houston Luiggi, 65 Valiants (Florida: University of Florida Press, 1965).

⁷ Maximiano Fiquepron, “Lugares, actitudes y momentos durante la peste: representaciones sobre la fiebre amarilla y el cólera en la ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1867–1871,” História, Ciências, Saúde 25, no. 2 (2018): 335–51.

⁸ Betina Aguiar, “Discursos y representaciones sobre la muerte en los libros de lectura en Argentina (1900–1930)” (PhD thesis, University of Buenos Aires, 2021).

⁹ José Pedro Barrán, Medicina y Sociedad en el Uruguay del Novecientos. Volume 1: El poder de curar (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1994).

¹⁰ Jorge Salessi, Médicos, maleantes y maricas. Higiene, criminología y homosexualidad en la construcción de la nación Argentina (Buenos Aires: 1871–1914) (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 1995).

¹¹ Fabio Grementieri and Claudia Schmidt, Arquitectura, educación y patrimonio. Argentina 1600–1975 (Buenos Aires: Pamplatina, 2010), and Inés Dussel, “The Pedagogy of Latrines: A Kaleidoscopic Look at the History of School Bathrooms in Argentina, 1880–1930,” Oxford Review of Education 47, no. 5 (2021): 576–96.

¹² Patricia Barbieri, “La arquitectura escolar. Una mirada desde la estética de la vida cotidiana,” en Escolarizar lo sensible. Estudios sobre estética escolar (1870–1945), dir. Pablo Pineau (Buenos Aires: Teseo-Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica, 2014), 237.

¹³ Horacio González, “El problema del Higienismo,” Positivismo argentino: simuladores de la razón (Buenos Aires: Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno, 2015), 3–8.

¹⁴ Julián Battolla and Jaime Bortz “Los orígenes de la salud escolar en Buenos Aires,” Revista del Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires 27, no. 2 (2007): 87–96.

¹⁵ Adriana Puiggrós, Sujetos, disciplina y curriculum en los orígenes del sistema educativo argentino (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1990).

¹⁶ González, “El problema del Higienismo.”

¹⁷ Víctor Mercante, “Estudio del niño. Antropometría Escolar,” El Monitor de la Educación Común 18, no. 428 (1908): 220–21.

¹⁸ Víctor Mercante, La educación del niño y su instrucción (Escuela científica) (Mercedes: Mingot y Ortiz, 1897).

¹⁹ Víctor Mercante, Metodología especial de la enseñanza primaria (Buenos Aires: Cabaut y Cía, 1932), 41.

²⁰ Víctor Mercante, La paidología. Estudio del alumno (Buenos Aires: M. Gleizer, 1927), 28.

²¹ Carlos O. Bunge, La educación contemporánea (Madrid: Daniel Jorro Editor, 1903), 22.

²² Ibid., 23.

²³ Ibid., 24.

²⁴ Martín Navarro, “La Paidología,” Archivos de pedagogía y ciencias afines 4, no. 12 (1908): 336–53, 336.

²⁵ Adrian Carbonetti, “Historia de una epidemia olvidada. La pandemia de gripe española en la Argentina, 1918–1919,” Desacatos, no. 32 (January–April 2010): 159–74.

²⁶ The “Riachuelo” is one of the rivers that works as a natural border of the city of Buenos Aires (the other one is the “Río de la Plata”). Historically, it was a source of dirt and contamination. Located in the south of the city, it has been always a geographical place associated with poverty. For example, in that space were located slaughterhouses since the middle of the nineteenth century, a reason for the contamination.

²⁷ People in Argentina (and many others countries in the region) use to share the “mate” (an infusion, like a tea). The reason why it’s considered as unsanitary is because the mate is drunk with a “bombilla” (a tube for sipping, like a sorbet), that pass from person to person and it could be a way of scattering germs, virus, etc.

²⁸ Aguiar, “Discursos y representaciones.”

²⁹ Michel de Certeau, La invención de lo cotidiano: artes de hacer. I (México: Universidad Iberoamericana, 1996).

³⁰ Daniela Edelvis Tesla, Del alcanfor a la vacuna Sabin. La polio en Argentina (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2018).

³¹ The institution called Sociedad de la Beneficencia was created in 1823. It was organised and managed by a group of women from the upper social classes, and it was in charge of social assistance issues such as the care of orphans and people in need.

³² Karina Ramacciotti, “Política y enfermedades en Buenos Aires, 1946–1953,” Asclepio. Revista de Historia de la Medicina y de la Ciencia, 58, no. 2 (2006): 115–38.

³³ Archivo Ratier: caja 6, carpeta 28, sobre 99. Biblioteca Nacional de Maestras y Maestros. Argentina.

³⁴ Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (London: Allen Lane, 1979); AIDS and Its Metaphors (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989).

³⁵ The image of society as a “sick body” reappears in later dictatorships to justify their repressive practices with sanitary metaphors. The “subversive” outbreak clusters and the already infected subjects had to be eliminated and eradicated to protect the still healthy subjects, while the latter had to be taught to prevent themselves from the disease and to strengthen their defences.

³⁶ Rodolfo Walsh, Operación Masacre (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor: 2007 [1957]).

³⁷ Elisa Pastoriza and Juan Carlo Torre, “La democratización del bienestar,” in Nueva Historia Argentina. Volume 8: Los años peronistas (1943–1955), dir. Juan Carlos Torre (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2002): 257–312; and Karina Ramacciotti, La política sanitaria del peronismo (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2009).

³⁸ This office had been created as an Office in 1930 from the previous School Medical Committee, and turned into a National Directorate in 1948.

³⁹ Adrian Cammarotta, “El cuidado de la salud de los escolares en la provincia de Buenos Aires durante el primer peronismo (1946–1955). Las libretas sanitarias, las fichas de salud y las cédulas escolares,” Propuesta Educativa 20, no 35 (2011): 113–20.

⁴⁰ Tesla, Del alcanfor a la vacuna Sabin.

⁴¹ “Comisión Nacional de Lucha contra la Poliomielitis. Instrucciones para la Campaña de Vacunación,” Revista de Sanidad Escolar 1, no. 1, August, Buenos Aires (1956): 61–2. Ministry of Education and Justice – General Directorate of Health.

⁴² Tesla, Del alcanfor a la vacuna Sabin.

⁴³ For the use of this type of sources in historical-educational research, see Corredor Romero, Maya (2021) “Indagando entre posts y tags. El uso de archivos no convencionales en la historiografía de la educación,”(paper presented at the 21st Jornadas Argentinas de Historia de la Educación, 2021, SAHE-UNIPE) [mimeo].

⁴⁴ Daniela Edelvis Tesla, “Poliomyelitis and the ‘Emergence’ of Rehabilitation in Argentina. A Socio-Historical Analysis,” Apuntes, no. 83 (2018): 121–40; Francisco Sotelano “History of Rehabilitation in Latin America,” American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation 91, no. 4 (2012): 368–73.

⁴⁵ Abel Luis Agüero, “Poliomielitis en Argentina: epidemias, políticas sanitarias, tratamientos e instituciones,” Revista Argentina de Salud Pública 12 (2020): n.pag.

⁴⁶ During this period, other similar centres also emerged in the provinces. And among the non-governmental organisations that took active part during the epidemic, the Association for the Fight against Infantile Paralysis (ALPI) stands out, which, although founded in 1943, had an outstanding growth at that time.

⁴⁷ Sandra Carli, Niñez, Pedagogía y Política. Transformaciones de los discursos acerca de la infancia en la historia de la educación Argentina, 1880–1955 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Miño y Dávila, 2002).

⁴⁸ Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (London: Allen Lanetaphor (London: Allen Lane, 1979); AIDS and Its Metaphors (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989).

⁴⁹ Isabella Cosse, “Argentine Mothers and Fathers and the new Psychological Paradigm of Child-rearing (1958–1973),” Journal of Family History 35, no. 2 (2010): 180–202.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pablo Pineau

Pablo Pineau, Ph.D. in Education (UBA) professor of History of Latin American and Argentine Education at the University of Buenos Aires. He has an extensive experience in national and foreign publishing, acting as author, co-author and director of works related to history, theory and politics of education. He was the president of the Argentine Society for the History of Education, and the head of the Department of Educational Sciences at UBA. He was awarded the Tinker scholarship as visiting professor at Teachers College, Columbia University (New York/USA).

Ignacio Frechtel

Ignacio Frechtel, PhD in Educational Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires. Professor of History of Argentine Education at the University of Buenos Aires and the National Pedagogical University. Member of the Board of the Argentine Society for Research and Teaching in History of Education. Editorial Secretary of the Annual of History of Argentine Education.