The great milestones of public health in the Empire and everyday life in São Paulo: 1820-1870

Abstract

In this article, I intend to focus on three public health concerns of the nineteenth century in São Paulo, to demonstrate that the great legis-lative milestones or important epidemics of the period – regarded by historiographers as decisive – had little to no importance on the social pro-cesses that drove changes away from the capital. The three concerns I will be addressing are the prison, the cemetery, and the food trade. Becau-se this is a very divergent reasoning from what is now understood as public health, I will begin with a discussion about the concept of health in the nineteenth century, and also about the anachronism that often permeates studies on this topic. Then, I will focus on the prison, which was a first order issue regarding public health in the nineteenth century, and even more so in São Paulo (and pos-sibly throughout Brazil), where there was a great traffic between the interior of the prisons and the urban space. After that, I will tackle the issue of cemeteries, which was a very important public health topic, but one that generated tension, since it ran into ecclesiastical power. And finally, the issue of food, which was, in São Paulo, the item least consonant with modern demands of health.