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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2017

Nelly Oudshoorn
Nelly Oudshoorn*
Affiliation:
Université d'Amsterdam
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Extract

Il est difficile aujourd'hui de concevoir un univers sans hormones. Il nous faut remonter le temps pour trouver des mondes auxquels elles soient inconnues. Imaginons un paisible dimanche après-midi, à la fin du 19e siècle. Des femmes sont en train de commenter les derniers événements marquants. Si nous pouvions surprendre leur conversation, nous aurions un aperçu détaillé, intime, de la manière dont elles affrontaient la vie de tous les jours. Peut-être aurions-nous la chance de saisir des confidences sur leurs grossesses, leurs accouchements. Nous ne saurons jamais quels mots précis elles employaient alors, mais une chose est sûre : elles ne parlaient pas d'hormones pour expliquer leur existence car le terme n'existait pas. Le concept d'hormone fut forgé en 1905 et ce n'est qu'une vingtaine d'années plus tard que l'industrie pharmaceutique se lança dans la production massive de ces substances. De nos jours, des millions de femmes suivent des traitements hormonaux et bien des gens se réfèrent au modèle hormonal pour expliquer la physiologie et le comportement féminins. Actuellement, des hormones comme les oestrogènes et la progestérone sont les médicaments les plus utilisés de toute l'histoire de la médecine (Wolffers et al., 1989).

Summary

Summary

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 of the hormonal enterprise.

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 of the hormonal enterprise.

Type
Des « Social Studies of Science » A L'Histoire Des Techniques
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales , Volume 53 , Issue 4-5 , October 1998 , pp. 775 - 793
Copyright
Copyright © Copyright © École des hautes études en sciences sociales Paris 1998

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