Abstract
This essay explores how hormone treatments were used to optimize and normalize individuals under Italian Fascism. It does so by taking the activities of the Biotypological Orthogenetic Institute - an Italian eugenics and endocrinological centre founded by Nicola Pende in 1926 - as the prime example of a version of eugenics, biotypology, which was based on hormone therapies. This essay first demonstrates that Italian Fascist biopolitics was not only concerned with increasing the size of the Italian population, but also with improving its quality. It suggests that under the Italian Fascist regime hormone therapies became eugenic tools of intervention to improve the Italian race. Second, while Pende's institute purportedly enhanced men and women, its activities show the extent to which the 'techniques of normalization' pursued by the Fascist regime were both systematic and invasive.
Highlights
The attempt to optimize the bodies of men and women – as opposed to the mere treatment of illness and disease – was one of the defining characteristics of twentieth-century biopolitics.[1]
This essay explores how hormone treatments were used to optimize and normalize individuals under Italian Fascism. It does so by taking the activities of the Biotypological Orthogenetic Institute − an Italian eugenics and endocrinological centre founded by Nicola Pende in 1926 − as the prime example of a version of eugenics, biotypology, which was based on hormone therapies
This essay first demonstrates that Italian Fascist biopolitics was concerned with increasing the size of the Italian population, and with improving its quality
Summary
One could argue, began in Europe with rejuvenation therapies. As Christer Nordlund has pointed out, in the first half of the twentieth century there were three approaches to eugenics: the first, so-called negative eugenics, sought to prevent undesirable individuals from being born; the second, so-called positive eugenics, aimed to produce individuals with better-than-average characteristics; the ‘third way’, namely hormone therapy, was designed to remake, improve and refine the human material that was already at hand.[20] Pende’s work can be interpreted as a part of this last trend, a point borne out by the testimony of internationally renowned interwar scientists who assigned to his institute the role of pioneer in optimizing the human body This is well illustrated by Alexis Carrel, the French biologist, surgeon and Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine or Physiology who, in his classic eugenic text L’homme, cet inconnu (Man, the Unknown) (1935), lavished praise on Pende and his Italian Biotypological Orthogenetic Institute. Under Viola, Pende held the position of medical assistant, first at the Special Medical Pathology Cabinet within the University of Palermo and in Bologna from 1919.26
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
