Within the frame of a non-linear medicalization process, different spheres produced a discourse aiming to criminalize health practices that escaped the control of academic medicine. Following a qualitative methodology and a historical-hermeneutic approach, we analyze the voices that emanated from biomedicine and the press linked to “alternative” healing practices, in the cities of Córdoba and Buenos Aires during a period of disciplinary crisis (1920-1930). We specifically analyze the discourses produced by those individuals identified as “quackers”, who were on the fringe of mainstream science.