The child in Luso-Brazilian medical writings (18th and 19th centuries)

Abstract

In 19th century Brazil, and most prominently in Rio de Janeiro, doctors and medical students produced a series of treaties, manuals, theses and journals, which were intended to disseminate academic knowledge about children's health and diseases. According to these writings, a medical science that was increasingly concerned with moralizing everyday practices by regulating children's bodies was under construction. Despite the fact that the Rio de Janeiro Anatomical, Surgical and Medical School and the Tipografia Régia were created in the year 1808, throughout the 17th century some treatises by doctors and surgeons, which mentioned child care, circulated through Brazilian lands. However, it is important to bear in mind that the institutionalization of medicine and the creation of the first birth courses in Brazil were responsible for the dissemination, on a large scale, of themes that directly related to the health of mothers and their young. Based on the importance that the doctor gave to infants in the 1800s, the purpose of this project, to be developed in Portugal, is to investigate what was produced in Portuguese-Brazilian lands about child health between the 18th and 19th centuries. To answer why the medicine of 19th century Brazil began to treat children systematically, it is important that we understand, in general terms, the circulation of this knowledge in Portuguese America and its metropolis. Therefore, continuing the doctoral thesis that has been developed with the Postgraduate Program in History of the Universidade Estadual Paulista, campus of Franca (process FAPESP nº 19 / 03976-5), and within the scope of the thematic project Writings on new worlds: a history of the construction of moral values in Portuguese (process FAPESP nº 13 / 14786-6), it is intended to map and consult, in the main Portuguese collections and libraries, during the period of four months, manuals, theses, treaties , compendiums, pictures, recipes and books that deal with the treatment of children's bodies, which are not available in the Brazilian libraries already consulted. (AU)