Medical Knowledge and the Body of Women in Colonial Brazil: The Medical Tradition of the Metropolis in the Captaincy of Paraíba

Abstract

In the 16th century, the Portuguese medicine underwent changes that reflected the experimentalism provided by the Iberian overseas expansion. Inheritors of the Hippocratic-Galenic tradition, Portuguese doctors insisted on the reproductive functions of women’s bodies and created explanations and remedies for problems related to menstruation and childbirth. This tradition was transplanted and adapted to Brazil, where it was confronted with new practices of cures. In this article, I will analyze the ways of thinking the body of women in this colonial encounter based on the official discourse of medical treaties. Afterwards, I confront this discourse with the medical practices used in the Captaincy of Paraíba, based on manuscripts of Portuguese and Brazilian archives.