In 2003, historian Diego Armus reflected on the coalescing subfield of the history of medicine in Latin America. His edited collection Disease in the History of Modern Latin America: From Malaria to AIDS demonstrated that medicine was a fruitful analytical lens for exploring broad historical phenomena in the region. A new volume, Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America, edited by Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Raúl Necochea López, illustrates how much the subfield has developed over the last two decades—and how much necessary research remains to be done.
In exploring the Cold War through Latin American medicine, Peripheral Nerve pokes holes in two influential narratives that have guided scholars' understandings of the Cold War. The first replicates a bipolar framework and centers action in the Western and Eastern blocs; the second maintains that the United States exercised an all-encompassing hegemony over Latin America, pulling the puppet strings...
