A proposed cure for homosexuality and the circulation of male hormone therapies in Brazil, 1938-1949.

Abstract

This article analyzes Homossexualismo e endocrinologia (1938), by the medical examiner Leonídio Ribeiro. The work recommends opotherapy for leading "passive pederasts" towards heterosexuality. Opotherapy, or organotherapy, created in the late 1800s, consisted of using medicines produced from glandular secretions from non-human animals to treat humans with disorders of the endocrine glands. The study examines how the male body was represented and how a culture of compulsory virility was promoted in commercial advertisements for glandular extracts in 1930s and 1940s Brazil. The aim is to contribute to contemporary scholarship on the history of the "gay cure" and its intimate connections with eugenics.