Reproduction And Its Discontents In Mexico

In this history of childbirth and contraception in Mexico, Nora E. Jaffary chronicles colonial and nineteenth-century beliefs and practices surrounding conception, pregnancy and its prevention, and birth. Tracking Mexico's transition from colony to nation, Jaffary demonstrates the central role of reproduction in ideas about female sexuality and virtue, the development of modern Mexico, and the growth of modern medicine in the Latin American context. The story encompasses networks of people in all parts of society, from state and medical authorities to mothers and midwives, husbands and lovers, employers and neighbors. Jaffary focuses on key topics including virginity, conception, contraception and abortion, infanticide, "monstrous" births, and obstetrical medicine. Her approach yields surprising insights into the emergence of modernity in Mexico. Over the course of the nineteenth century, for example, expectations of idealized womanhood and female sexual virtue gained rather than lost importance. In addition, rather than being obliterated by European medical practice, features of pre-Columbian obstetrical knowledge, especially of abortifacients, circulated among the Mexican public throughout the period under study. Jaffary details how, across time, localized contexts shaped the changing history of reproduction, contraception, and maternity.

A rebellious Indian proclaiming noble ancestry and entitlement, a military lieutenant foreshadowing the coming of revolution, a blasphemous Creole embroiderer in possession of a bundle of sketches brimming with pornography. All shared one thing in common. During the late eighteenth century, they were deemed to be mad and forcefully admitted to the Hospital de San Hipolito in Mexico City, the first hospital of the New World to specialize in the care and custody of the mentally disturbed. Christina Ramos reconstructs the history of this overlooked colonial hospital from its origins in 1567 to its transformation in the eighteenth century, when it began to admit a growing number of patients transferred from the Inquisition and secular criminal courts. Drawing on the poignant voices of patients, doctors, friars, and inquisitors, Ramos treats San Hipolito as both a microcosm and a colonial laboratory of the Hispanic Enlightenment--a site where traditional Catholicism and rationalist models of madness mingled in surprising ways. She shows how the emerging ideals of order, utility, rationalism, and the public good came to reshape the institutional and medical management of madness. While the history of psychiatry's beginnings has often been told as seated in Europe, Ramos proposes an alternative history of madness's medicalization that centers colonial Mexico and places religious figures, including inquisitors, at the pioneering forefront.

How much sex should a person have? With whom? What do we make of people who choose not to have sex at all? As present as these questions are today, they were subjects of intense debate in the early American republic. In this richly textured history, Kara French investigates ideas about, and practices of, sexual restraint to better understand the sexual dimensions of American identity in the antebellum United States. French considers three groups of Americans—Shakers, Catholic priests and nuns, and followers of sexual reformer Sylvester Graham—whose sexual abstinence provoked almost as much social, moral, and political concern as the idea of sexual excess. Examining private diaries and letters, visual culture and material artifacts, and a range of published works, French reveals how people practicing sexual restraint became objects of fascination, ridicule, and even violence in nineteenth-century American culture. Against Sex makes clear that in assessing the history of sexuality, an expansive view of sexual practice that includes abstinence and restraint can shed important new light on histories of society, culture, and politics.

How does one make decisions today about in vitro fertilization, abortion, egg freezing, surrogacy, and other matters of reproduction? This book provides the intellectual and emotional intelligence to help individuals make informed choices amid misinformation and competing claims. Scott Gilbert and Clara Pinto-Correia speak to the couple trying to become pregnant, the woman contemplating an abortion, and the student searching for sound information about human sex and reproduction. Their book is an enlightening read for men as well as for women, describing in clear terms how babies come into existence through both natural and assisted reproductive pathways. They update “the talk” for the twenty-first century: the birds, the bees, and the Petri dishes. Fear, Wonder, and Science in the New Age of Reproductive Biotechnology first covers the most recent and well-grounded scientific conclusions about fertilization and early human embryology. It then discusses the reasons why some of the major forms of assisted reproductive technologies were invented, how they are used, and what they can and cannot accomplish. Most important, the authors explore the emotional side of using these technologies, focusing on those who have emptied their emotions and bank accounts in a valiant effort to conceive a child. This work of science and human biology is informed by a moral concern for our common humanity.

Abortion in Mexico examines the social, legal, and judicial condemnation of abortion in Mexico from the early post-contact period through the present day.

In eighteenth-century Mexico, outbreaks of typhus and smallpox brought ordinary residents together with administrators, priests, and doctors to restore stability and improve the population's health. This book traces the monumental shifts in preventive medicine and public health measures that ensued. Reconstructing the cultural, ritual, and political background of Mexico's early experiments with childhood vaccines, Paul Ramírez steps back to consider how the design of public health programs was thoroughly enmeshed with religion and the church, the spread of Enlightenment ideas about medicine and the body, and the customs and healing practices of indigenous villages. Ramírez argues that it was not only educated urban elites--doctors and men of science--whose response to outbreaks of disease mattered. Rather, the cast of protagonists crossed ethnic, gender, and class lines: local officials who decided if and how to execute plans that came from Mexico City, rural priests who influenced local practices, peasants and artisans who reckoned with the consequences of quarantine, and parents who decided if they would allow their children to be handed over to vaccinators. By following the multiethnic and multiregional production of medical knowledge in colonial Mexico, Enlightened Immunity explores fundamental questions about trust, uncertainty, and the role of religion in a moment of discovery and innovation.

This book uncovers the ambivalence towards commerce in eighteenth-century France, questioning the assumption that commerce was widely celebrated in the era of Adam Smith.

Mexican History is a comprehensive and innovative primary source reader in Mexican history from the pre-Columbian past to the neoliberal present. Chronologically organized chapters facilitate the book's assimilation into most course syllabi. Its selection of documents thoughtfully conveys enduring themes of Mexican history--land and labor, indigenous people, religion, and state formation--while also incorporating recent advances in scholarly research on the frontier, urban life, popular culture, race and ethnicity, and gender. Student-friendly pedagogical features include contextual introductions to each chapter and each reading, lists of key terms and related sources, and guides to recommended readings and Web-based resources.