OFFICIAL MEDICAL BOOKS THAT (ALSO) TELL ABOUT POPULAR PRACTICES: AN ANALYSIS OF WORKS PUBLISHED ABOUT MINAS MINES IN THE 18TH CENTURY

• Grant number: 25/04007-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2025
• End date: April 30, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Ana Carolina de Carvalho Viotti
• Grantee: Laura Pereira Teixeira Luiz
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Eighteenth-century Minas Gerais is a privileged place to identify, question and understand the the syncretism of knowledge and healing practices that were the keynote of colonial Brazil: ways of knowing and acting on sick bodies, coming from indigenous, African and European traditions, converged in plural experiences - with the work of healers, midwives, barbers, doctors, surgeons and religious, whether licensed or not - and in an interesting set of works published in Portuguese. Contrary to what was usual at the time, surgeons, such as Luís Gomes Ferreira, José Antônio Mendes and João Cardoso de Miranda, took up their quills and systematized their quills and systematized, in a mixture of erudition and experience, what they understood as disease and (ways of) curing it in those parts. We have to consider that, in the midst of exploitation and in overcrowded urban areas, various illnesses arose, especially among the enslaved population, subjected to population, subjected to exhausting working hours. For these diseases, these three surgeons adjusted their knowledge to the specific situations of the place - such as the climate, the people resources - taking advantage of much of the region's flora and, of course, the management of these ingredients that were known and widespread. ingredients that were known and widespread in that society, which had no formal medical education. medical education. Based on this framework and the works published by these three surgeons, this study aims to map and analyze the interconnection of different healing practices, highlighting the medicine in the mining environment. (AU)