Entre a civilização e a república: as práticas da medicina higienista em Natal/RN nos anos 1920

Abstract

This research work has the objective to analyze the medical-hygienists practices in the city of Natal on the 1920 decade, with emphasis in national historical context, and, delimiting the particularities of Rio Grande do Norte Capital, during the consolidation of Brazilian Republic. In view the historiographic and educational quality of this research, we had resort the documental investigation, using the newspaper “A República”, to discover informations about the medical-hygienists practices at that time, also as testimonial of ideas about a new Brazil thought by republicans who lived in the city. This journal, as a oficial media of state’s government, often has published content about the importance of public space sanitation and the referred culminating progress. The sistematic reading of these testemonials reveals that Natal accepted the republican movement going in a national trend in a cultural aspect. This had disseminated in the town like the prerrogative of a sanitized society and a supposed “youth revival”, necessary to develop a modern nation. For this, was created tools to include these project into a political action. By the help of references, was possible to understand the scientific discourse that supported these interventional and eurocentric ideas about national progress, and, therefore, describe their influences to Natal’s intellectuals. This way, we realize the medical-hygienist practices in a conception of social progress, according to modern thinking in a emergent Republic.

Key-words: medical-hygienist practices, Hygiene, Education.