Paper short abstract:

In this article I will analyze the Portuguese and Brazilian compulsory control upon those prostitutes who by the first half of 20th century got syphilis. I’ll also analyze the dynamics of the anti-venereal institutions of the time, as well as the way both police and medicine developed ways of surveillance upon the women’s bodies they thought would have prostitution as working activity.

Paper long abstract:

In this article I will analyze the Portuguese and Brazilian compulsory control upon those prostitutes who by the first half of 20th century got syphilis. I'll also analyze the dynamics of the anti-venereal institutions of the time, as well as the way both police and medicine developed ways of surveillance upon the women's bodies they thought would have prostitution as working activity.

It is known that these women were compulsory treated in anti-venereal asylums, such as S. Sebastian's Hospital, known as Magdalenas' Asylum, in Belém - Brazil, and also in the Saint Mary Magdalene ward, at Hospital of Desterro, in Lisbon.

These questions are relevant for our understanding of the health dynamics of that period. We will discuss, for instance, what relations can we infer from the specific treatment applied to prostituting women and how, at the time, this kind of medical knowledge has influenced the circulation of certain kinds of ideas and practices about syphilis between Portugal and Brazil. We will also try to discuss how prostitute's syphilis medical treatments differently developed in relation to the ones offered to women who also suffered from the disease but were not prostitutes.

These are fundamental questions for our general understanding of the common representations of syphilis, an important disease for both the representations and politics of public health during the first half of the 20th century.