Among books, lens and miasmas

the medical thesis of the Faculty of medicine of Rio de Janeiro and the Cholera epidemic (1855-1856)

Abstract

This papers discusses the production of medical theses dealing with cholera morbus, presented to the Faculty of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro when the epidemic reached Brazil (c.1855). We are interested in noticing the influence of certain foreign authors, of local instructors, of medical paradigms, and also of canonical expectations about what the dissertations of the “doctoral students” should be (expectations imposed mainly by the Faculty statutes). These different viewpoints take us close to questions pertaining to the history of reading and the history of the book, which only recently are being tackled by historians interested in the “medical book”. Furthermore, we try to understand how the students reacted to descriptions and “framings” of the “reigning epidemic”, especially its symptomatology and suggested causes of contagion.