Book Review

摘要

This book is a welcome addition to the historiography of psychiatry and psychiatric institutions in Latin America. Although still a relatively young and small field, the history of psychiatry is an important sub-field in the ever-expanding scholarship on the history of medicine and public health in the region. We now have good studies of the history of psychiatric ideas and practice, as well as psychiatric institutions, for several countries, most notably Mexico (see the work of Cristina Sacristán, Cristina Rivera Garza and Andrés Ríos Molina), Argentina (Mariano Plotkin, Jonathan Ablard and Hugo Vezzetti, among others), Peru (Augusto Ruiz Zevallos, Santiago Stucchi-Portocarrero and William Stein), Chile (Maria José Correa and Pablo Camus), Bolivia (Ann Zulawski) and Cuba (Jennifer Lambe). In Brazil, the largest and most populous country in the region and arguably the country with the most advanced scholarship in the history of medicine and public health, Magali Engel, Ana Teresa Venancio and Cristiana Facchinetti, among others, have made key contributions to our understanding of the emergence and development of psychiatry. This book, which draws on a commendably broad range of sources, from newspapers to medical journals, to travellers’ accounts, builds on the work of these scholars while adding valuable new insight.