This study unfolds from the analysis of a set of documents collected during my doctoral research, which investigated the management of filth and its relationship with the governing of populations during the formation and development of modern cities. In this set, annals of Brazilian hygiene congresses, conducted during the first half of the twentieth century, a period characterized by the enlargement of techniques and practices of social medicine, were selected. Such annals of congresses and some laws of the time evidence the construction of an alliance between Sanitary Education and techniques of popular pedagogy, responsible for the population adherence to standards of conducts countersigned in social hygiene requirements. From Michel Foucault's writings on genealogical analysis, descent lines are described about healthy modes of conduct which, in turn, produce some effects in contemporary truth about personal and social hygiene.
social medicine; sanitary education; popular pedagogy; genealogy