The Politics of Healing: Leprosy and Biomedical Knowledge Production in Brazil, c. 1850

Studies on leprosy in Brazil during the 1840s exhibited the political relevance of the sick poor’s bodies for the national project of state making. In Brazil, physicians’ opportunities to develop scientific investigation often happened in state-sponsored institutions and charity-based hospitals while they worked as public health officials or state employees. Considering the influence of racial and social constructions of leprosy that saw in the diseased both its victim and its perpetrator, this work examines how physicians’ pursuit of a cure for leprosy led to tensions and negotiations with the sick poor that represented the politicization of health for Brazilian state building.

Analyzing the politics of biomedical investigation on leprosy raises broader questions regarding the scientific role of the marginalized in processes of state making. This was clear, for instance, when considering the race for guano experiments in different parts of Brazil after a French newspaper released an article in 1846 that claimed the Peruvian substance held curative properties against leprosy. The varied instances of coercion and negotiation with the sick during biomedical research demonstrated larger projects of medical legitimization that included boosting physicians’ political relevance, their attempts to influence the project and meaning of national modernity, and to legitimize Brazil’s role as a contributor to scientific progress.

Building from the historiography of public health and state building in Brazil, I reassess the scholarly focus on late-1800s science, and public health as a source of state control. Physicians in the early 1800s held little to no political power as health officials. Hence, in looking at their attempts to find a cure for leprosy my work examines how the interactions between physicians and the poor shaped scientific knowledge production and their impact on the medical attempts to reframe Brazilian state building.