Public women versus public health. The sanitary control of the prostitution in the center of Mexico, 1876-1910

Abstract

In the Mexico of the second half of the XIX century, the concern for the public hygiene as a manifestation of the political and social progress that was sought to reach, made one of the problems to combat with more effort to be it the expansion of venereal illnesses. The public woman was considered as the main responsible for the propagation of this wrongs, reason why the impelled politics during the presidency of the general Porfirio Díaz around the prostitution and under the help of the reglamentarismo and of the hygienists ideas, she rested in good measure in the establishment of a sanitary control on the prostitutes, by means of obligatory medical exams to guarantee the public health.