Physicians and potion makers at the Imperial Court: a colonial legacy

Abstract

This article aims at analyzing popular practices and representations related to diseases and healing in the city of Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century. Based on European travelers' reports, the author emphasizes the fact that both illness and healing used to bear specific implications, which led the low-income population to search for their own means to keep or recover good health regardless the presence or the absence of physicians. After showing evidence of the enormous popularity of homemade medicines and the belief in spiritual healing as opposed to the efforts of academically-formed doctors to keep the "monopoly of competence" in healing, the author attempts to reassess the historical belief that the small number of physicians in Brazil in the 1800's troubled indistinctly all social strata.