This article deals with the discourses produced by the Argentine medical field relating to body transformation initiatives on the part of transvestites and transsexuals in Argentina from 1971-1982. Based on the compilation and analysis of a set of articles published in academic medical journals, it examines the meanings that health professionals assigned to these initiatives prior to the legal rulings and national legislation that recognized gender identity as a human right. This analysis helps identify the particular features of those body transformation initiatives during the period studied, as well as the ways in which the medical field in Argentina attached moral, technical and professional meanings to them.