This research had the purpose of analysing the notion of female body that health workers of Asilo de Lomas in Temperley (nowadays Hospital Esteves) / Hospital Nacional de Alienadas (nowadays Hospital Moyano), CABA, had through the discourse analysis of the medical records of women who entered the psychiatric hospitals between 1920 and 1950 as well as to analyse how this notion was related to certain practices. We selected 15 medical records that were identified by our research team as relevant for a qualitative approach among 372 medical records of the collection. Through this analysis we were able to identify the norms that ruled female bodies in that historical context and who required an exclusion of the social space, which was also legitimized by the psychiatric discourse of the time. We noted that "reason" was considered as a value and women's bodies, memory, attention and affection were to be centred in the households, demureness and cordiality. Strengthened gestures, laughs, being "camp", aggressive or excited were a clear evidence of a mental alteration to be treated or excluded. Family conflicts as well as arguments with their husbands were determinant at the moment of defining diagnosis and the word of male relatives took special relevance when deciding the admissions. In the medical-psychiatric discourse the abject bodies of women were being constructed, bodies that were subjected to coercion, exclusion and to a lesser extent, care, and that also constructed agency through resistance mechanisms: in their discourse during medical interviews, in escape attempts and even by trying to supply themselves outside the official circuit.