“Researchers of an experimental truth still not proven

the medical science in the International Sanitary Convention of 1887 between Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina

Abstract

The objective of the present article is to discuss the scientific production of the technical Commission in the Sanitary Convention of 1887, organized by the Empire of Brazil and the republics of Argentina and Uruguay in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Its main objective was to emphasize the institutional spaces of science production and its main characters - especially the doctors - that participated in the scientific experiments, as well as the scientific production associated with the Sanitary Convention. At that moment, the main goal was to prove that the salted and dried meat – a product from Argentina and Uruguay that was broadly consumed in Brazil - served as means of transmission of the cholera morbus, an epidemic that reached South America in that moment. The doctors conducted experiments in the Laboratory of Physiology of the National Museum, in Rio de Janeiro, and the documentation is in the Historical File of Itamaraty. One can notice that, based on that work, the strong relation between the interests of science and the economical ones in those countries.