In this contribution to the debate on the institutionalization of medicine in Brazil, special focus is placed on the role that the first Brazilian medical periodicals played in endeavoring to establish and broaden the medical audience. The success of these efforts meant that physicians belonging to Rio de Janeiro’s Sociedade de Medicina and, later, to the Academia Imperial de Medicina needed to make scientific periodicals an effective means of exchange among members of Rio de Janeiro’s cultured elite. The attention devoted by these periodicals to the nation’s sanitary issues underscores the importance of the hygienist discourse, viewed as the prime way to bring medicine into public life.
periodicals; medicine; hygiene; Brazil