Abstract
This article seeks to discuss the illegal therapeutic practices of two healers who worked in the state of Espírito Santo in the 19th century: Trem and Olegário dos Santos. The criminal proceedings that present the repression to their practices will be analyzed considering some key points: the way official medicine’s coercion mechanisms functioned during the final years of the Empire of Brazil and at the beginning of the Republic; we will also consider what sort of therapeutic practices (analyzed considering a morphological perspective) and what cultural matrices can be identified in the healers’ actions, as well as what kinds of sociability relations lie behind their therapy practices.
Keywords:
therapy practices; Imperial medicine; Espírito Santo; 19th century