Good live upon rules: urbanity and civility on health manuals

Abstract

The investigation analyse two manuals of the physician Dr. Mário Totta, The Physician at Home and Medicine in Pills: Short Histories Health. Both were published in 1939, by Livraria do Globo, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. They present instructions and procedures for the cure of small maladies, first helps elementary notions of puericulture, and basic attentions with the body hygiene, diet, habitation, and also by the particular codification of conduct making severe association of urbanity or civility with hygiene and health. The form of their counsel indicates an intersection of scientific and moral arguments. The examination of the manuals shows the complexity of the relations between the very text of manuals, their support, their materiality, such as, the object of text and the numerous meanings of its several subjects. The major purpose of this work is to put the manuals in the center of a medical practice, which aimed the sanitary education of the people. It also focuses on the discourse of the physicians about urbanity through their texts and their educative character.

Key words: manuals of health, history of education, civility.