“I had a lazaretto opened to treat a smallpox patient”
The statements on combating smallpox in Rio Grande do Norte at the end of the 19th century.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21680/1984-817X.2025v1n01ID38465Keywords:
Smallpox. Isolation. Rio Grande do Norte.Abstract
This work aims to analyze the discursive statements of the fight against smallpox in the second half of the nineteenth century, published in the Reports of the President of the Province/State of Rio Grande do Norte and in the writings of Câmara Cascudo. The capital of the state was a place where sick bodies with smallpox were treated by isolating them in cloistered spaces, such as the Lazareto da Piedade. To better understand this model of isolation, I dialogue with the debate undertaken by Michel Foucault (1979) on urban medicine. Using Foucaultian discourse analysis as a methodology, I conclude that smallpox, becoming an object of government attention, imposed the notion of healthiness on an unequal society lacking public hygiene notion, which was also taken over by a vaccinephobia.
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