Objectives:

This article aims to contribute to the research on the use and circulation of medications during the twentieth century in Argentina; it focuses on the links between the sanitary politic of venereal prophylaxis and the process of production, importation and distribution of medicines for the treatment of the "secret diseases".

Content:

By 1936 the nation deployed a prophylaxis venereal politic that allowed private groups to produce and import medicines. While the National Department of Hygiene promoted a standard treatment of venereal disease, the private laboratories used advertisement to build, expand and segment the consumer's market. In this article we remark how the segmented message in the medical journals had the goal of transforming the doctors in agents of the medicineis sale.

Conclusions:

The standard treatment imposed by the sanitarian bureaucracy stimulated the production, importation and offer of national and foreign laboratories' drugs. The advertising spots appealed doctors as owners of the valid criteria for the consumption medicines. The laboratories funded medicine journals of physician's groups with the aim of extending the consumption of their products among the doctor's patients.

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