A apropriação da monstruosidade pelo saber médico.

Abstract

The study aims to describe how the discourse around deformities is the result of a process that began in the nineteenth century, which shifted the phenomenon of monstrosity of records on moral aberrations morally or religiously described to the field of Biology. The hypothesis is that there was a medical appropriation of monstrosity guided by three vectors mainly: the development of Teratology as science; change of sensibilities and the emergence of the feeling of compassion, largely stimulated by the nineteenth-century literature; and increasing number of disabled people as a result of the First and Second World Wars, which led to a change in the way societies dealt with a body marked by deformity. Both Teratology, as literature were important players in the process of awareness about the humanity of monsters. It is precisely this transition from one social category of "monster" for the social category of "deformity bearer", built by the medical knowledge, this study aims to investigate.