For the health of the body
History and health policies in Chile

By reviewing medical body care and state intervention in the sanitary field of contemporary Chile, this compilation contributes to understanding the connection between illnesses, reproduction, bodily forms, social class, sexual difference, and gender attributions that have nurtured multiple interpretations still alive in popular culture and medical culture. But it also introduces us to the history of a facet of the Latin American civilizing project that addresses, and at times is obsessed with, the absence of hygiene and the campaigns that promoted it, with the education of the senses and instincts, and with the role of consciousness and will in mastering the body and its appetites.