diplomat/certified knowledge alternatives in the public scene: an approximation to the quackery from the written press of the cities of córdoba and buenos aires, argentina in the 1920s

This paper aims to study how the written press of the cities of Córdoba and Buenos Aires (Argentina) defined the "continuous advance of quackery and charlatanry" at different times of 1920s. In a context of limited national historiography related to the study of the empirical practices, we want to probe this problem in two different geographic spaces that formed part, —even today— of a country with strong regional inequalities. We wonder how journalistic representations defined "quackery" as a puzzle whose pieces refer to the State, graduate professionals, the society and the empirical healers themselves. In our reconstruction, we recognize that these discourses were influenced by the editorial course and the ideological affiliation to which the newspapers of two of the most important metropolis of Argentina asserted. Based on a qualitative methodology, we put into an analytical perspective a set of news with the aim to rescue "voices and looks" that contributed to build the empirical practices of heal as a social problem of the public sphere during the years of study.