Selling Sanity

Gender and Health Rhetoric in Late-Nineteenth-Century Spanish Cultural Press Advertisements

Abstract

The paper examines engendered advertising mostly targeted at women’s mental health in a collection of Spanish cultural magazines mainly from the late nineteenth century. During a period dominated by degeneration theories, which were adapted to national discourses about decline, the study focuses on the interaction between medical treatises and the content and strategies of medical-pharmaceutical advertising primarily aimed at women. First, the paper reviews the emergence of “master drugs” and reproductive manuals, reflecting on their links to popular beliefs about the organic and contagious nature of illnesses, as well as showing how the advertising of reproductive manuals created spaces for desire, using a language that blended mechanical-reproductive jargon with literary notes. It also analyzes medications marketed for regulating women’s bodies and minds, considering their relationship with visual culture and highlighting how they revealed biases related to race, social class, and age. Finally, it addresses alcohol advertising, that contradicted medical advice, arguing that its gendered character combined with attributed magical-healing properties rhetoric, may have also played a role in shaping female desire.