One thing stands out in the first decades of the 20th century: the dissemination of medical discourses addressing the relation between medicine and education. The present article analyzes medical discourses on the many multiple aspects of education. It focuses on discourses that examine schools and students and underline that social preventive medicine would be unattainable without proper education. These discourses also remark that educating would not be possible without the incorporation of advancements accomplished by science - which were, in turn, personified by the medical profession. The article not only shows how the medical science was anatomy-centered and became physiological, but also demonstrates how the discussion and the mission of the medical science and profession started encompassing Education and Pedagogy. In this new paradigm, doctors legitimately guided pedagogists and created scientific theories and practices for education. The questioning looks of doctors over school and the tests and examinations they performed - only to display science's capabilities - confirm the precariousness of pedagogy and the prominence of medicine in caring after children and adolescents in school.
medical discourse; history of education; sanitary education; social medicine; Brazil
