Alcoolismo e medicina psiquiátrica no Brasil do início do século XX Alcoholism and psychiatric medicine in early twentieth-century Brazil

Abstract

Aborda o desenvolvimento da psiquiatria no Brasil, entre o final do século XIX e as três primeiras décadas do XX, com base no estudo da construção de saberes e práticas, neste campo, acerca do alcoolismo. Discute a visão da psiquiatria sobre a responsabilidade do álcool na manifestação da loucura. Trata a hipótese de que o conceito de 'psicose alcoólica' buscou enfeixar os sintomas e problemas causados no indivíduo pelo alcoolismo crônico. Chama atenção para o fato de que esta era uma 'doença social', definição que a aproxima das classes populares: de seus costumes, práticas e condições de vida. Procura analisar as internações nos hospícios, recuperando os ecos das discussões médicas e tomando as reflexões do escritor Lima Barreto como contraponto ao saber médico da época.Based on a study of the construction of psychiatric knowledge and practices regarding alcoholism, the article explores the development of psychiatry in Brazil from the close of the nineteenth century through the first three decades of the twentieth. It examines both the role that psychiatry assigned to alcohol in manifestations of madness as well as the hypothesis that the concept of "alcoholic psychosis" was an attempt to encompass the symptoms and problems triggered within someone with chronic alcoholism. Defining the latter as a "social disease" tended to link it with the lower classes and their customs, practices, and living conditions. In an analysis of confinement to asylums, the article also captures echoes of the era's medical discussions and uses the reflections of writer Lima Barreto as a counterpoint to medical knowledge at that time.

Keywords

• alcoolismo
• psiquiatria
• história da medicina
• Brasil
• séculos XIX/XX
• alcoholism
• psychiatry
• history of medicine
• Brazil
• nineteenth and twentieth centuries