Propaganda, polêmicas e institucionalização: a história da homeopatia no Brasil segundo José Emygdio Rodrigues Galhardo (1818-1930)

Abstract

The present work has as its object the thesis History of Homeopathy in Brazil, presented by José Emygdio Rodrigues Galhardo during the First Brazilian Congress of Homeopathy, in 1926. In this work, which was completed and published after a few years, the author built an extensive account of events and characters involved in the insertion and consolidation of the practice of the homeopathic doctrine in Brazil, between 1818 and 1930. Galhardo, throughout his text, claims for himself the condition of impartial historian, who produced a set of “subsidies” on the history of homeopathy for those who wished to study and rewrite it in the future. Indeed, the work was extensively used as a reference and documental source for numerous works on the history of homeopathy in Brazil. This thesis, which is linked to the research line Culture, migrations and work of the Graduate Program in History of the Federal University of Santa Maria, aims to understand how the work of José Galhardo was built and how homeopathy is represented and interpreted in its pages. As a hypothesis, it is understood that the work was written for a specific audience, related to the Instituto Hahnemanniano do Brasil, a group in which Galhardo was inserted, and builds a version of the history of homeopathy related to the views of this group. The first chapter addresses general aspects of the analyzed work, its author and the context of its production. The second chapter addresses the first two periods in the history of homeopathy defined by Galhardo, between 1818 and 1854. This periodization, it is worth noting, is related to the historical interpretation elaborated by the author, who defined the year 1840 as the inaugural date of Brazilian homeopathy. With this option, Galhardo contributed to the consolidation of the figure of the Frenchman Benoît Mure as the “introducer” of the Hahnemannian doctrine in the country. However, other homeopaths, such as Domingos de Azeredo Coutinho Duque-Estrada and Emilio Germon also claimed this role, setting up a dispute. In this time frame, controversy and propaganda are fundamental elements. That is, the public discussion and dissemination of homeopathic ideas, especially through the press. The third chapter addresses the other three periods defined by Galhardo, from 1855 to 1930, a phase in which Brazilian homeopathy intensifies its institutionalization process, with the foundation of the Instituto Hahnemanniano do Brasil, and the search for the officialization of homeopathic practice. One of the protagonists of this chapter is José Galhardo himself, as a director of institutions and a historian who built his own and representative version of the group in which he was inserted.