O Preventório Rainha Dona Amélia: educação higiênica e robustecimento infantil como profilaxia da tuberculose no Rio de Janeiro (1927)

Abstract

This research, which is part of the field of the History of Education, was carried out within the Teacher Training, History, Memory and Educational Practices Research Line of the Graduate Programme in Education, as part of the research carried out by the Interdisciplinary Research Centre in the History of Education and Childhood (NIPHEI). The aim of this study was to analyze the role of the Rainha Dona Amélia Preventory in promoting hygienic education and the strengthening of children who were the offspring of tubercular parents when it was founded in 1927. The guiding question of the research is: What were the practices of hygiene education and child development at the Rainha Dona Amélia Preventory, on the island of Paquetá, in Rio de Janeiro, since its foundation in 1927? The Rainha Dona Amélia Preventory was inaugurated by the Brazilian League Against Tuberculosis during the presidency of the jurist Ataulfo de Paiva. The institution was initially intended to hospitalize poor male children aged between 5 and 12 who were the sons of tuberculosis patients and were considered pre-tuberculosis. The aim is to contextualize Rio de Janeiro (Federal District) in a scenario of urban transformation at the beginning of the 20th century, in order to deepen the historical study of the education and care provided for children of tuberculosis patients. The study aims to contribute to further reflections on what has been written about the Rainha Dona Amélia Preventory and related institutions, such as the works by Ribeiro (1985), Nascimento (2002) and Camara (2016). The documentary sources analyzed were the newspapers Brazil-Médico, O Paiz, Jornal do Commércio, A Noite, among others. Material from NIPHEI's digitized collection was also used in the study, including 266 files from the inmates' home surveys and a report by the Brazilian League Against Tuberculosis on the Dona Amelia Sanatorium, Paquetá Preventory, written by Almir Madeira (Technical Director of the Preventory). As a theoretical and historical reference, studies by authors such as Camara, (2010), (2016), Certeau (1998), (1982), Chalhoub (1996), Goffman (1961), Nascimento (2002), Ribeiro (1985), among others, were confirmed. Throughout the analysis, it was possible to identify that the Preventory reflected and reproduces a hygienist and moralist ideology that linked poverty to social vulnerability and disease, resulting in a process of exclusion and stigmatization of the lower classes. The conclusion is that the Rainha Dona Amélia Preventory is an example of public health policy in early twentieth-century Brazil that shows how the treatment of disease was inextricably linked to the construction of an ideal model of childhood and the promotion of a 'healthy' society. This dissertation contributes to the understanding of the sanitary and educational practices of the time, highlighting the processes of marginalization and the impact of hygienist medicine on the poorest social classes.