Espaço, práticas médicas e institucionalização da loucura: um olhar sobre o Hospital Colônia de Natal (1957-1963)

Abstract

The object of study is the Hospital Colônia, a psychiatric institution located in the city of Natal. It is temporally delimited to the period between July 1957 (when patients were transferred from the Hospital de Alienados to Hospital Colônia) and March 1963 (when a change in the institution's board of directors altered the medical practices experienced there). It analyzes how the discourse that called for a new space for the treatment of madness was understood. Discuss the transfer of patients from Hospital de Alienados (1911-1957) to Hospital Colonia. It identifies the conditions of the sanitary and therapeutic practices of the Hospital de Alienados and the “innovative” proposal of the Hospital Colônia. It demonstrates how the new institution was physically structured so that medical practices that were then seen as progressive, such as labor therapy and praxitherapy, were adopted. It investigates how Potiguar psychiatry identified, diagnosed and treated madness in that historical context. It uses as main sources: the report of the provincial presidents and the presidents of the state of Rio Grande do Norte; newspaper articles about this theme and the medical records of patients interned at Hospital Colônia. They reported that the social demands for a specific space to treat madness were met, starting with the Hospital de Alienados to receive these demands and, later, the problems that came to exist in this hospital space during its operation. In journal articles, disparities were found between the physical structures of the two institutions. The medical records of patients hospitalized at the Hospital Colônia were analyzed with the aim of capturing the medical practices experienced, identifying the continuities and/or discontinuities of these practices in relation to the Hospital for the Insane, as well as observing the way in which the “social maladjustments” were treated