The Invention of the Chemical Puberty (1840s-1920s)

During the nineteenth century, puberty was explained within the context of the neural understanding of the body, presenting puberty as a psychologically dangerous transition phase that could lead to serious mental illnesses. The neural concept of puberty contributed to the biologization of “gender characteristics”, which were used, for instance, for excluding women from higher education. This paper sketches out the development from this psychological and neural understanding to a chemical model of puberty controlled by “puberty glands” (Steinach) around 1900. By the 1920s, this endocrinological model had become widely accepted in medical thought, but also posed new research questions. The endocrinological puberty model also took longer to enter the general public’s understanding of puberty.