Filantropia e assistência a saúde em Juiz de Fora: as Irmandades dos Passos e da Santa de Misericórdia (1897-1927)

Abstract

This dissertation deals with the Brotherhood of Nosso Senhor dos Passos and the Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Juiz de Fora, between 1897 and 1927. A complex political dynamic, this Brotherhood was responsible for managing the first and largest hospital in the city and also for the distribution of health care in the city of Minas Gerais. Founded in 1854, the House of Charity for a long period maintained a small building by which it was called a hospital and possibly attended only to the members of the Brotherhood when, in 1897, from the new political guidelines of the Republican Regime and the new profile of the worker urban, the hospital began to extend its service to the external public, especially to those who could pay for services. The brothers belonged to the political, social and economic elites of the city: they were lawyers, newspaper owners, capitalists, real estate investors, journalists and doctors. Their great majority have in common the fact that they came from the old coffee aristocracy that were adapting to the economic reality of the late nineteenth century, marked by the intensification of industrialization and the incorporation of salaried labor. With industrialization, the city underwent a process of sanitary urbanization, away from the urban centers the industrial workers along with promiscuity, alcoholism, lasciviousness and all the diseases from these conditions of life. The sanitary medical discourse was of great importance at the moment, consolidating its professional category and also putting in practice its postulations before the local politics. The new political and social configuration reflected in the health professionals, who went through the process of medical specializations, and consequently, in the hospital space, which expanded in order to cap large resources that finacionte such ventures.