Women, the press, and hygiene: The medicalization of birth in Bahia (1910-1927)

Abstract

The article discusses the role played by the lay press in disseminating the hygienist agenda in the city of Salvador, Bahia, in the early twentieth century, when journalists were writing about medicalized birth and the new standards of attention to the female body and to newborns. The Climério de Oliveira Maternity Hospital enjoyed the unrestricted support, of the press, which went out of its way to portray the facility as ideal for hospital births.