From baltimore to “lavras diamantinas”: Internationalization/ internalization of health in Bahia (1920-1930)

Abstract

The article analyzes the simultaneous process of internationalization and internalization of health in Bahia, along the Sanitary Reform of the 1920s, carried out with the assistance of Antônio Luis Cavalcanti de Albuquerque de Barros Barreto, Undersecretary of Health and Public Assistance. To this end, emphasis was placed on the trajecto-ries of Bahian physicians who were financed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the progressive knowledge of the backlands of Bahia by the State, which expanded the Rural Sanitation Posts and sent medical commissions to contain epidemics, map the territory and the population’s health conditions. The sour-ces used were medical reports, journals, medical theses, scho-larship forms and correspondence collected at the Rockefeller Archive Center. It is understood that the internationalization/ internalization of health integrated the development of inter-national health.