Abstract

The paper presents, mainly through the figure of Dr. Max Westenhoffer and in a work of Drs. Barrientos and Schirmer (1937), the connections between the development of medicine and anthropology in Chile with the development of the biological determinist thought and racism in Europe. Chilean Physicians and anthropologists as Otto Aichel, Aureliano Oyarzún, Edgardo Schirmer and Juvenal Barrientos indicate the direct relationship of the Chilean scientific program of the early twentieth century with the hereditarian and racist program, which reached its climax with the Nazi eugenics.