On care and cure: the negotiation of freedom and the health care practices between slaves, slave holders and emancipated slaves in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in the 19th century

Abstract

This article has as objective to consider a debate about the reserches of the practices of health, illness and cure as a space of interesting historical value for the investigation about the tensions, conflicts and negotiations between slaves, “forros” and slaveowners in the Rio Grande do Sul of century XIX. For this, I consider the care of the diseases as a point of capital importance in the negotiations between the different groups that coexisted in that society. At the same time, the experience of the disease and the relations that from were established there can in such a way disclose to other aspects of the cotidianidade of captives and its gentlemen, as well as those that, free of the yoke of the slavery, searched to occupy a new space in the social hierarchies. In this direction, the analysis of process-crimes, periodical articles, particular letters, inventories and wills has been revealing of the complex social interactions that if established when the health and the illness were factors in game.

Key words: health, slavery, negotiation.