“The Cornerstone of Eugenics in Brazil”

the foundation of the Ambulatório Rivadávia Corrêa

Abstract

This research investigates how the foundation of Ambulatório Rivadávia Corrêa, a hub for hygienic education in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, was reported by journals, newspapers and magazines of the period. The hypothesis is that the clinic ratified a treatment policy that extrapolated psychiatric knowledge and brought together diverse discourses, such as republicanism, work, poverty and race. In the analysis of this field of dialogue, it is expected to understand the participation of psychiatric ideas in eugenic theories, and insert it in a broader perspective, adequate to the set of instruments of social regulation that had to be built (or rebuilt) after the end of slavery in Brazil. The research was carried out on primary sources, which make up the collection of the Hemeroteca Digital platform of the National Library. As a tool for analyzing this material, the concept of Social Marker was used, understood as the set of socially constructed differences that add up to the production of inequalities or hierarchies.