Espelhos d´água. Banho, higiene, de beber, gênero, raça e doença em território brasileiro. (1808-1913)

Abstract

In Brazilian Hemeroteca´s collections and Faculties of Medicine (RJ, BA) productions, we reconstructed the panorama of water consumption and distribution in Brazilian territory after the arrival of the Portuguese Court with its institutional apparatus. We present the economic contribution of imports and the predatory extractive strategy implementation in Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia states. We followed the development of water therapy in health stations, where the aim was to build civilizational centers, going through a process of discredit, understood as Dandyism centers. Hydrotherapy, the most advanced medical technique at the time, analyzed the body heat change caused by the hot tropical climate and observed nervous disorders, from which residents, subject to climatization process, suffered greatly. We enunciate social perspectives of gender and race in the shaping of a new selective and exclusionary modernity that problematized foods, behaviors and temperaments shaping a new woman, suffering from Hysteria due to emotional shocks and excessive tropical heat. This investigative wave of colonial occupation developed therapies and health processes that discriminated and restricted access to the natural resource. Understanding the theoretical and practical production of doctors, in the formative transition of Psychology discipline, we follow practices in institutions that highlight the Hydrotherapy studies contributions in Psychology and the embryonic formation of the treatment of mental illnesses in places, sanatoriums, where the Brazilian Holocaust occurred.