Banca de DEFESA: JONAS CLEVISON PEREIRA DE MELO JÚNIOR

“To balance moods and control odors”: an interpretation of practices and representations of body hygiene 

in nineteenth-century Recife.

Material culture; Body hygiene; Recife; XIX century.

The present dissertation, in analyzing the process of incorporating body hygiene habits in imperial Recife, sought to articulate discourses, practices, and social representations regarding bodily cleanliness with the advent of hygienist thinking in the 19th century. Through the analysis of Material Culture related to bodily hygiene practices and appearance care, recovered in excavations carried out at the Archaeological Site of Pilar, located in the Recife neighborhood, an association was perceived among the objects that compose it, the process of constructing representations through the appropriation of hygienist medical discourse, and the incorporation of these practices into the daily lives of social groups in the city of Recife. This work aimed to demonstrate the adoption of a new stance towards public health issues, especially concerning bodies that fell ill in the capital of the then province of Pernambuco, in a context of "material improvements" guided by ideals of civilization and progress from Europe. Based on a bibliographic survey on themes such as body and city, the chrono-stylistic analysis of the Material Culture selected for study, and the cross-referencing of information obtained in the analysis of these traces and in historical sources such as traveler's accounts, periodicals, laws, codes of conduct, and medical manuals, it was observed that the recurrence of traces associated with these practices at the Archaeological Site of Pilar is revealing regarding the attention given to bodily functions in the nineteenth century. The results obtained allowed for the hypothesis that there was the construction of a set of representations about the hygienic body and good appearance which, stemming from hygienist discourse, influenced the adoption by sectors of Recife society of a Material Culture dedicated to body hygiene practices linked to Hippocratic medicine, as a way of adhering to the assumptions established by a "hygiene ideology" prevalent in the defined period for analysis.