A saúde pelo progresso: médicos e saúde pública em Minas Gerais

Abstract

This dissertation proposes to examine some aspects concerning the transformation of health in a "public good" in Brazil, as well as the professionalization process of the doctors, as a category, both ongoing in the years of 1930s. We will give special attention to a group of doctors from the state of Minas Gerais whose ideas had been discussed in two different journals, REVISTA MEDICA DE MINAS and REVISTA MINAS MEDICA, both analyzed in this research. These physicians' speech constitutes a pivotal tenet to understand how things shifted as a result of the "1930 Revolution" and how these changes reflected over Brazilian health system, by giving special attention to continuities and disruptions. Besides that, it is important to know how the sanitary doctors obtained positions on the new state bureaucracy as a way to enhance the State responsibility towards the population's health, at the same time they were concluding the professionalization process of its own category.