Hormones, technique et corps. L'archéologie des hormones sexuelles (1923-1940)

On hormones, technologies and bodies. An archeology of sex hormones 1923-1940. N. Oudshoorn. Nowadays, we can hardly imagine a world without hormones. Women all over the world take hormonal pills to control their fertility and estrogen and progesterone have become the most widely used drugs in the history of medicine. But why has the female rather than the male body become increasingly subjected to hormonal treatment? This paper challenges the idea that there exists such a thing as a natural body and shows how concepts such as the hormonal body assume the appearance of natural phenomena by virtue of the activities of scientists, rather than being rooted in nature. The paper describes how, in the case of sex endocrinology, the activities of laboratory scientists, clinicians and pharmaceutical entrepreneurs in the 1920s and 1930s were highly structured by the fact that there existed a medical specialty for the reproductive functions of the female body (gynaecology), and not for the male body. Knowledge claims linking men with reproduction could not be stabilized simply because there did not exist an institutional context for the study of the process of reproduction in men. The paper concludes that it was this asymmetry in organizational structures that made the female body into the central focus ofthe hormonal enterprise.Oudshoorn Nelly, Morel Ginette. Hormones, technique et corps. L'archéologie des hormones sexuelles (1923-1940). In: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. 53ᵉ année, N. 4-5, 1998. pp. 775-793