Healthy prescriptions

social and moral control of menopausal women in nineteenth-century Brazil

Abstract

The present article analyzes the thesis titled Considerations Regarding the Critical Age of Women (1849), by Jose Luiz Cardozo, a student at the Faculty of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro. Cardozo's study delves into the "critical age" of women, associated with menopause, examining the medical and social implications of this phase in a woman's life. The doctor describes the physical and emotional changes experienced during puberty and climacteric, while also providing medical and behavioral recommendations for women to cope with the cessation of their reproductive years. This work seeks to highlight how 19th-century medicine pathologized the female experience, limiting women's autonomy and contributing to the construction of gender stereotypes. The objective is to identify factors that prescribed certain behaviors to older women, aiming to establish control over their conduct and shape a particular moral code to be followed once their procreative functions ceased.