Discourses and political-administrative practices of the medicalization of madness in Caldas, Colombia (1908-1944)

Discursos y prácticas políticoadministrativas de medicalización de la locura en Caldas, Colombia (1908-1944) Discourses and political-administrative practices of the medicalization of madness in Caldas, Colombia (1908-1944)

Objective: to understand the speeches, practices and premedicalizing therapeutics carried out by politicians and charitable administrations in Caldas from 1908 to 1944. Methodology: historical-hermeneutical analysis of the speeches recorded in ordinances, political pronouncements of the moment in the assemblies, reports from governments, inter-institutional letters and questionnaires in which the condition of the patients was reported. Results: the constant reference of the madman as outside the moral and social order was observed when he interrupted public life with his furious attacks, the property and the decorum of the city. On the other hand, it was possible to see the practical vision of state rationality regarding the treatment that these subjects should have, whether they were isolated at home or in an asylum. Conclusion: in the period studied, a process of proto-medicalization emerged, first because there was no consolidated university medical knowledge, this will emerge strongly in the 50s and 60s with the founding of the Faculty of Medicine and, later, in the 60s with the creation of the specialty of psychiatry; Second, there was no psychiatric clinic in the department, but there was evidence of concern and the need for its construction, contemplated in the political speeches of the time, as well as in the trend continuity in the budgets assigned for the alienated and he notes a growing interest in medical professionalization and in giving a more specialized treatment to the alienated in the region.