A gazeta médica da Bahia: entre educação do corpo, modernidade, ginástica e outras práticas corporais

Abstract

The present study is part of the Postgraduate Program in Education (PPGE), of the Faculty of Education, of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), in the thematic line Education, Body Culture and Leisure, integrating the CORPO research group. This research is a historical research. Our study seeks to understand what representations of the body are present in the editions of Gazeta Médica da Bahia, and the relationships between an education of the body centered on modernizing ideas, seeking to locate the debate about gymnastics and other body practices in this context. Gazeta was the specific scientific periodical with the greatest circulation and relevance in Brazil in the second half of the 19th century. It appeared in 1866, circulated regularly between 1866 and 1934, then between 1966 and 1972, with a single number in 1976, and was produced regularly again between 2002 and July 2011. Here, we limit our study to the GMB's first production cycle: 1866 when it appeared and 1934, the year in which the rights of the Journal were transferred to the Faculty of Medicine of Bahia (FAMEB). To this end, we are based on the methodology of Cultural History, with the concept of Representation as central to our analysis. Human existence is impossible to be understood dissociated from the body. The human condition is essentially bodily. The body can unfold as a reflection of the situation in which it finds itself. Therefore, we can assume the body, bodies as objects of study that speak about themselves and the environment, space and time. The close relationship that gymnastics and some body practices had with medical debate is already widely debated in national literature. During the 19th century, the development of medicine, at different times, sought to validate the importance of physical education for strengthening the body and the nation. Among the physical exercises advocated, gymnastics occupied a prominent place in this community, due to its alleged scientific nature, but others also made up the debate in the Gazeta Médica da Bahia. The increase in research in the areas of physiology, anatomy and biology highlighted the importance of these practices for individual and social development, based on justifications that revolved around hygienic, moral, aesthetic and economic ideals. These ideals made up a notion of what would be modern, a central objective that motivated a large part of Brazilians, mainly an economic elite, politicians, intellectuals and, notably, doctors. In the wake of this thought, as considerations, we point out that the medical knowledge circulated in GMB, constructed representations of the body, as an individual and social element both capable and necessary to be transformed, educated by the interventions that medicine indicated, among them, the practices body. Thus, the multiple representations of bodies agreed in the same sense, they would all be capable of being educated and transformed into modern bodies to compose the modern city context, as long as they followed hygienic precepts, among which gymnastics and other bodily practices were highlighted in the scenario of education of the modern body.