This text analyses the medical organization in Rio Grande do Sul state, in Brazil, through the doctor’s performances at Santa Casa de Misericórdia in Porto Alegre city, at the Medicina Faculty and at the Rio-Grandense Medical Union. The doctors’ proposal conflicted with the Positivist political organization which was part of the local government up to 1928, which aimed the end of the professional freedom in the state. The medical organization was consolidated with the national regulation for the medicine practice and correlated professions in 1932, although there was problems for its accomplishment in Rio Grande do Sul. The effective organization of the medical activity happened with the rearrangement of hygiene services and public health, through the Regulation of the State and Health Department of Rio Grande do Sul, in 1938, which determined in details all the duties of social medical care.
Medicine History; professional regulation; identity and corporation