Dr. Hernández Berrones is a historian interested in understanding how disputes over scientific and medical knowledge cause social, cultural, and political change in Mexico and in Latin America. Particularly, he is interested in how hegemonic models of medical science, medical institutions and public health policies change as a result of contending understandings of the body, health, and disease. He has published articles in the Journal of the Social History of Medicine and Health (China), História, Ciência, Saúde, Manguinhos, and Medical History as well as book chapters that explore the long and complex history of healing occupations in Mexico, free schools of medicine, obstetrics and nursing as vocational training in Mexico during the 1920s and 30s, and the links between spiritism and homeopathy as healing approaches through the life experience of Francisco I. Madero. His book titled A Revolution in Small Doses: Homeopathy, the Medical Profession, and the State in Mexico, 1893-1942 is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press. His work has been supported by numerous institutions including the National Council of Science and Technology in Mexico (CONACYT), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association for the History of Medicine, and the Institute of the History of Medicine of the Robert Bosch Foundation.

Research Grants and Fellowships (selected)

Southwestern University Research Assistant Program (2022-23, 21-22, 20-21, 19-20, 18-19).

Southwestern University Faculty Student Research Program, (summer 2022, 21, 20).

Summer Stipend Program, National Endowment for the Humanities, spring, 2019.

Sam Taylor Fellowship, General Board of Higher Education, fall, 2018.

Junior Sabbatical, Southwestern University (for Spring 2018), fall, 2016.

Southwestern Faculty Competitive Funds, summer, 2016.

Southwestern Faculty Competitive Funds, summer, 2015.

Awards

Jack D. Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Development Award American Association for the History of Medicine, 2016

Hans Walz Prize for Studies in the History of Homeopathy, Institute for the History of Medicine, Robert Bosch Stiftung, 2015

Articles

“Plural Medicine, Medical Expertise, and Public Health in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Mexico” [十九世纪和二十世纪墨西哥的多元医学、医学专业知识和公共卫生]. China Journal of the Social History of Medicine and Health VI, 2 (December 2021), 122-147. [Link]

“Breaking the Boundaries of Professional Regulation: Medical Licensing and Foreign Influence in the Consolidation of Homeopathy in Mexico”, História, Ciência, Saúde, Manguinhos 26, 4 (2019), 1243-1262. [Link]

“Medicine ‘for Mexicans’: Medical Popularization, Commercial Endeavors, and Patients’ Choice in  the Mexican Medical Marketplace, 1853-1872”, Medical History, 61, 4, (October, 2017): 568-589. [Link]

Book chapters

“Healers and Doctors: A History of the Healing Professions in Mexico,” in Healthcare in Latin America: History, Society, and Culture edited by David S. Dalton and Douglas J. Weatherford, p. 19-39. University of Florida Press, 2022. [Link]

“An Undesirable Past: Free Medical Schools and the First Doctors of the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1945,” in Transforming Medical Education: Historical Case Studies of Teaching, Learning, and Belonging in Medicine edited by Delia Gavrus and Susan Lamb, 208-232. Montreal, Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022. [Link]

“Mystic of Medicine, Modern Curandero, and “Médico improvisado”: Francisco I. Madero and the Practice of Homeopathy in Rural Mexico at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” In The Gray Zones of Medicine: Healers and History in Latin America edited by Diego Armus and Pablo F. Gómez, 89-107. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021. [Link]

Book Reviews

“Review of Surgery & Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770-1940 by Elizabeth O’Brien.” Technology and Culture 66, 1 (2025): 247-249. [Link]

Review of Carter, Eric D, In Pursuit of Health Equity: A History of Latin American Social Medicine. H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews. December, 2024. [Link]

“Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo by Jennifer Koshatka Seman.” Bulletin for the History of Medicine 97, 1 (2023): 162-3. [Link]

“Mestizo Modernity: Race, Technology, and the Body in Postrevolutionary Mexico by David S. Dalton.” Technology and Culture 62, no. 4 (2021): 1268-69. [Link]

Sloan, Kathryn A. Death in the City: Suicide and the Social Imaginary in Modern Mexico. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017, 257pp. Review by Jethro Hernandez Berrones for H-LatAm (https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=50971). February, 2018

Translations

Palmero, Arturo, “Free School of Obstetrics and Nursing of Mexico: Goals, Bylaws, Rules, Study Plans, and Programs,” transcribed and translated by Jethro Hernández Berrones, in HOSLAC: History of Science in Latin America and the Caribbean. Advanced Topic: Reproductive Histories ed. Julia E. Rodriguez. [Link]

Ceniceros, Tomasa, Clementina Brito, and Natalia Torres Meneses, “Three Clinical Histories (1929-1931) from the Free School of Obstetrics and Nursing of Mexico,” transcribed and translated by Jethro Hernández Berrones, in HOSLAC: History of Science in Latin America and the Caribbean. Advanced Topic: Reproductive Histories ed. Julia E. Rodriguez. [Link] 

Perea, Manuel, Manuel Morán Calderón, and Ester Chapa, “Report from the Secretariat of Public Education on the Free School of Obstetrics and Nursing of Mexico (1936),” transcribed and translated by Jethro Hernández Berrones, in HOSLAC: History of Science in Latin America and the Caribbean. Advanced Topic: Reproductive Histories ed. Julia E. Rodriguez.  [Link]

Digital Publications and Projects

“Williamson County Science Building.” Online exhibit. Supervision and edition of students’ work.

“History of Science at Southwestern University.” Online exhibit (supervised and edited students’ work).

“A Recipe for the Body: Chiropractic Medicine in Mexico (Part II),” The Recipes Project, December 12, 2019, https://recipes.hypotheses.org/16107

“A Recipe for the Body: Chiropractic Medicine in Mexico (Part I),” The Recipes Project, December 18, 2019, https://recipes.hypotheses.org/16087

“A visit to the Battle Creek Sanitarium (1914)” on Digital Texas Heritage Resource Center, Southwestern University Special Collections and Archives. [Link]

Note: This is a list of selected seminars and not a complete list.

Invited lectures, and talks

Guest speaker: “’Homeopathy in the light of biology:’ The boundaries of medical science after the Mexican Revolution.” Seminario Itinerante, UNAM-IIF, UNAM-CEIICH, CINVESTAV, COLMEX. 2023.

Inaugural lecture: “The Grass Is Greener on the Other Side of the Fence: My Encounter with the Liberal Arts.” First-Year Experience lecture series. St. Mary´s University, San Antonio. October 12, 2022

Invited presentations in seminars, workshops, and classes

“Las fronteras de la medicina moderna en México: magnetismo, espiritismo y homeopatía como ciencias médicas experimentales en la República Restaurada y el Porfiriato,” Seminar on Social and Cultural History of Health and Disease, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, UNAM, Mexico, March 20-21, 2025, in the context of the edited collection Salud, enfermedad y atención en la historia de México, siglos XIX y XX edited by Claudia Agostoni and to be published by Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, UNAM.

“Visualizando partos a domicilio en la ciudad de México después de la revolución: las parteras de la escuela libre de obstetricia y enfermería (ELOE) 1920s y 1930s.” Seminario permanente de investigación de Atlas.mx, sponsored by CIDE, CONACYT, INEGI, UCMexus, UC Riverside, and John Hopkins University, online, December 18, 2024.

“Recuperando las reliquias de la medicina moderna en México: Homeopatía, vitalismo y religión, 1853-1912,” Seminar on Social and Cultural History of Health and Disease in Mexico, May 16-17, in the context of the edited collection Salud, enfermedad y atención en la historia de México, siglos XIX y XX edited by Claudia Agostoni and to be published by Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, UNAM. 2024.

Guest speaker: “Colonial Legacies in the Mexican Pharmaceutical Industry: The Instituto Médico Nacional (1888-1905) and the Exploration of Medicinal Plants.” Lecture to and discussant for medical students in the Inquiry Immersion Elective course on Decolonization within the Health Sciences, UCSF. January, 2023.

Respondent: “El genérico espectacular: los medicamentos y la simipolítica en México,” by Cori Hayden in the Seminario Itinerante de Historia e Historiografía de las Ciencias y las Tecnologías, UNAM, Colmex, CINVESTAV, IPN. December, 2022

Guest discussant: Undergraduate seminar: Cultures-Medias of Environmental Health. Rice University. Professor assigned my “Mystic of Medicine, Modern Curandero, and “Improvised Doctor”” article. I explained my research, the historiography, and the larger context of the article. I also engaged student questions. Fall, 2022.

Guest discussant: The professionalization of medicine. Graduate seminar. History of Medicine II. University of California, San Francisco. Professor assigned my “Breaking the Boundaries of Professional Regulation” article. I explained the larger context of the article and engaged student questions. Spring, 2021

“Birthing the Children of the Revolution: Midwifery in 20^th-Century Mexico,” Rice University Medical Humanities working group, online, February 12, 2021. The presentation highlighted the work of RAs Jasmine Herrera, Savannah Reeves, and Saul Zúñiga.

Conference Presentations

“An In(di)visibilized Labor: The Free School of Obstetrics and Nursing and the Erasure of Professional Midwifery in Post-Revolutionary Mexico City,” for the roundtable titled “Reproductive Science: Comparative Perspectives on the Past; Global Inspirations for the Future,” 2024 annual meeting of the History of Science Society, Mérida, Mexico, November.

with Samantha Alvarado, “Challenging Norms: Gender, Obstetrics, and the Gynecological Massage in Mexico in the 1920s,” Annual Conference of the Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science, Atlanta, GA, March, 2023.

“Birthing the Children of the Revolution: The Practice of Midwifery in Mexico City, 1920-40,” American Historical Association, Conference for Latin American History, annual meeting, New Orleans, January, 2022.

“Giving Birth to the Children of the Revolution: Professional Midwifery in Mexico City in the 1920s and 30s”, Latin American Studies Association, 38^th International Congress, May, 2020.

“Midwife Tomasa C. de Jumper: The Appropriation of and Contestation to Obstetrical Knowledge after the Mexican Revolution”, Southeastern Conference of Latin American Studies 67th Annual Meeting, Austin, TX, March 2020.