Between police repression and medical knowledge: The social control of madness in the Holy Spirit between 1950 and 1950

Abstract

This article offers a historical overview of the way by which the state of Espírito Santo dealt with the matter of madness as a social problem from the end of the nineteenth century until the 1950s. By targeting the development of medical knowledge and its institutions in the local sphere, we will try to understand the main characteristics assumed by the treatment of mental illness - and the place occupied by crazy individuals - in Espírito Santo's society during the referred period. By basing our analysis on Foucault's critics of the so-called exclusion games brought about by scientific kwowledge in modern times, it will be sustained that the institutionalization of the medical treatment of mental illness in Espírito Santo did not serve to overcome its old repressive and police practices but to intensify a process of exclusion of insane individuals which took place in that society at least since the last part of the nineteenth century. In order to prove that hypothesis, we will analyse entry books, medical records and interviews granted by some employees of Audauto Botelho Hospital: the main institution responsible of turning the treatment of madness in Espírito Santo into a modern medical enterprise during the 1950s.