The advent of sanitation and the effort to engender marriage practices in family groups in the Zona da Mata of Minas Gerais

a influência do discurso médico-científico no engendramento de comportamentos sociais.

Abstract

The first years of the twentieth century are marked by the advent of the era of sanitarism, which, combined with the positivist ideal of the First Republic in Brazil, produced urban and social transformations that built the foundations of Brazil today. However, these referred transformations went beyond the field of public works and medical-scientific policies to encompass social relations in the most intimate sphere of society, namely, conjugal relations. In the wake of this process, this article lends itself to addressing the relationship between medical-scientific research and the behavior of society, focusing more specifically on the influence that medical-scientific discourse had on the matrimonial decisions of various family groups that allow debate on a large scale the abandonment of the consanguineous marriage strategy in favor of extra-family marriages in order to prevent the generation of offspring that inherit diseases genetically enhanced by the consanguineous marriage of their parents.