The following article analyzes the body practices - the school physical education, gymnastics, games, dances, rides, walks and certain sports - in Argentina at the end of the nineteenth century- as a conflictive field where different actors and social groups spread, distributed, transmitted and produced a complex and heterogeneous group of topics linked to the body and its functioning, health and illness, sexual difference and femininity. From a medical point of view, we drew our attention on one of the most commonly mentioned illnesses more at that time: hysteria. We also analyzed the meaning of health for the girls and women that experienced the practice of gymnastics and different prescribed physical exercises. The main question is: how and why did the medical recordconceptualize both health and illness/ in the frame of certain body practices for girls and women?
body practices; gymnastics; femininity; maternity; hysteria