Domestic medicine manuals and the circulation of knowledge in the 19th century

the case of “Guia médica das mãis de família”

Abstract

In the 19th century, domestic medicine manuals represented the translation of academic medical knowledge into a pleasant and easily accessible language, intended for the dissemination of medicine among lay people not initiated in the medical field. Such literature is part of the genre of scientific dissemination or popularization, increasingly frequent in the publishing world from this century onwards. This study seeks to understand the forms of circulation of medical knowledge in 19^th century Brazil through the actions of dissemination of the work Guia médica das mãis de família, published in 1843 by the French physician Jean Baptiste Alban Imbert, evaluating its possible success in the popularization of science in the 19th century.