The article studies the building of public trust in transplants via a historico-discursive analysis of media sources from 1900 to 1960 in Spain. Maintaining the ‘rhetoric of hope’ as the journalistic strategy for representing transplants, the initial discursive approach involved the image of the doctor as hero, and transplants as miraculous events. After corneal implants became widespread, transplants were presented as a dream come true thanks to the scientific and technical skills of expert physicians. Since the first news of kidney transplants, the press stressed the promise of a better future through science but reflecting a more cautious medical position and confidence that results could be quantified.
transplants; medicine; rhetoric of hope; historico-discursive analysis; Spain