During the first half of the XIXth Century, the activity of bleeder (crucial in the therapeutics of the period) experienced changes related to the gradual organization of the physicians - above all through the institutionalization of their education with the creation of medical schools. They fought for the monopoly of the medical care activities, and searched to make illegal and to disqualify the practice of bleeding exercised when practiced by anyone who wasn't a doctor and/or a surgeon graduate in the academy. This paper intends to analyze such changes, focusing on the relation between bleeders and doctors and the increasing concern of these for hygiene.
History of medicine; Bleeders; Physicians; Brazil; XIXth Century