Tuberculosis and literature in Córdoba in the first half of the 20th century

Abstract

In this paper we intend to continue and deepen the research initiated, based on literature that has not yet been analyzed and trying to give new directions to the one already studied. We will try to investigate about the community of images that circulated in the Argentine society and that were reflected in the literature, however these images had different interpretations and discursive charges according to the positioning and the role of the social actor in relation to the disease: the sick, the doctor and the healthy. For the analysis we will take only the literature that emphasizes the life of the sick person in the sierras of Córdoba, where the images generated about the tuberculosis sufferer are visualized to a greater extent. In order to carry out the study, we have a wide range of literature: The memoirs of Antonio Cetrángolo, a physiologist, published under the title Thirty Years caring for tuberculosis patients; Esther, a story published in several issues in the newspaper Los Principios of the city of Córdoba, whose author was the Catholic physician Juan Cafferata, a scholar of the tuberculosis problem in the city of Córdoba; Ester Primavera, a short story by Roberto Arlt written in the thirties and published in El jorobadito; Balcón hacia la muerte, an autobiographical novel written by Ulises Pettit de Murat and Boquitas pintadas, a novel by Manuel Puig. It is not important here the quality of the literary work or the current to which each one belonged, but the fact that tuberculosis has been the guiding thread on which each of the texts is mounted. What we intend is to visualize and analyze images of tuberculosis in its social construction. Due to the extension of the work, we will take only some aspects for the analysis: first, we will present the importance of the Córdoba sierras for the climatic cure and medical testimonies about the arrival of tuberculosis patients to the region during the first half of the 20th century. Secondly, we will analyze some of the images that circulated in the Argentinean society at the beginning and middle of the 20th century and were reflected in the mentioned texts. Finally, we will study three topics that we consider important in the perception that both doctors and patients had of the disease: the idea of the landscape, the problem of contagion and daily life in the sanatoriums.