OUR JOURNAL COVER NOSSA CAPA
Boutique de Barbier (Loja de Barbeiro).
Aquarela, 1821. Jean Baptiste Debret
The residents of port cities such as Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, the most important ones at the end of the 18th century, did not count on the aid of many doctors or surgeons. Even in the ships that arrived in the city, the lack of health professionals was not only felt, but also troublesome, and this was easily noticeable in the big number of sick sailors and soldiers in the military and charitable hospitals.
In the absence of doctors, it fell to practitioners and barbers the care of sick people on board, making use of all the drugs available in the so-called pharmacy boxes of the ships. Even in established hospitals, doctors and surgeons resented the lack of resources to treat patients. Drugs and instruments available were really precarious even to the patterns of the time. It is worth noticing that not only the resources were scarce, but so were the fees obtained. Thus, besides the small number of professionals, many of them moved away in search of better fees.
The barbers, who also disputed with doctors, surgeons and apothecaries the exercise of the function of health professionals, had official permission to perform some medical practices, mainly surgery interventions of minor scale, such as bleeding, cutting for draining, applying cupping glasses, treating wounds, besides extracting bullets and teeth. Important is the report of Jean Baptiste Debret, the French painter who could very well portray in a real and faithful way the late-18th-century Brazil: "The barbers working in Rio de Janeiro were almost always blacks or mulattos. Besides doing barber services or surgeries, they also took care of other activities of different kinds, such as the mending of clothes and the arrangement of small music bands, very common in the Court then; when practitioners did not attend customers in the sidewalks, they usually installed shops in their own homes.
In the watercolor by Debret, which illustrates the cover of this issue, and is entitled Barber Shop, the artist painted the faithful portrait of his report, with the presence of black people exerting their function and, specially, with the detail of a store inscription, where one can read "Barber, Hairdresser, Bleeder, Dentist, Auctions and Bixas".
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
18 Nov 2005 -
Date of issue
June 2005
