The article discusses sanitation issues as aspects of the process of foreign immigration into São Paulo state during the first decade after the Proclamation of the Republic. The text also shows the relationships between this wave of immigration and the structuring of state sanitation services and the devising of the techno assistance model adopted by these services as of the 1890' s. At a time when yellow fever was the most common and lethal of the epidemics plaguing that state killing mainly foreigners one of the lodestars of public health actions was the defense of this inflow of immigrants. The interests of coffee growers, expansion of the railroads, immigration, and yellow fever all came into play when the oligarchies then in power in São Paulo defined what direction sanitation measures would take. The Brazilian government's authoritarian organization left no room for individual health assistance initiatives. Long a demand of both urban and rural populations, forms of individual health assistance became widespread only in the 1930' s, when Brazil developed its social health-care system.
history of public health; immigration; yellow fever; epidemiology; history of science