Precursors of "Psychiatric Journalism" in Mexico City at the End of the 19th Century

The objective of this paper is to analyze three journalistic pieces of different journalistic genres about the inner life of Mexico City's madhouses Hospital San Hipolito (for men) and Divino Salvador (for women) at the end of the 19th Century. The authors of the studied pieces, Hilarion Frias y Soto, Julio Poulat and Francisco Zarate, were writer-journalists interested in observing, describing and recreating the inner life of asylums through their writings. The main argument of the present article is that their discursive productions were just narrative options among a wide range of journalistic offerings by the various mexico city's newspapers of the time interested in mental issues.