In a region that had been a big producer of sugar for exportation, and afterwards of coffee, preoccupations with education and health had been a little bit left beside. There was just a little number of teachers and attending schools opportunities were restrict. In these schools, only after learning to obey God's and State Laws, students learned reading, writing and counting. If illiteracy among free men was general, among women it was much bigger, even many wives of sugar-cane farmers. Just a few readers, little number of books: but they existed: they were almost always religious ones, some, however, pointed to their owner's interests, as the ones related to health and sickness. In Campinas, there were a lot of diseases among free people and slaves and there were hard difficulties in relation to medical, surgical or pharmacological treatment. Shortness of men with "scientific" abilities for cure motivated actions in order to supply the lack of such professionals in that region (as the creation of a Pharmacological-Surgical Academy) as well as the wide action of medicine men among rich and poor, slaves or free people. Many families, as their richness and literacy allowed it, prevented themselves with simple home pharmacology, in which there were a little of everything, or with books that could indicate what to do in emergencies. As such books were read aloud they helped to relieve pains and spread what was called the "true cure art".
education; health; Campinas; XIX Century