Filhos e Comunicantes

a construção do problema da proximidade com os doentes de hanseníase na legislação.

Abstract

In Brazil, between the 1930s and 1940s, discourses were produced and disseminated focusing on the assistance of a group formed by children and young people, and legislations that determined the Preventorium/Educational center as the institution for this purpose. Our objective in this article is to observe in this legislation how this group is defined, even questioning the use of the expression “children of Hansen's disease patients” and similar ones in these documents. The construction of stigma, analyzed by Erving Goffman, is our conceptual basis in agreement with studies related to the construction of childhood and the history of diseases. Our methodological path was based on the analysis of sources such as the Guia de Encaminhamento médico to the Preventorium; the Regulamento de Saúde Pública de Goiás (1932); the Regulamento dos Preventórios para Filhos de Lázaros, Instalados no Brasil; and the monography entitled Organização e funcionamento de Preventório. Our questions are: can the use of expressions relating children assisted in the Preventoriums to disease, present in the legislation concerning the organization of the preventorium/educational center, and to the prophylaxis and control of the disease, be perceived as one of the constituting elements of stigma? Did the use of the expression “children of Hansen’s disease patients” conduce to a restricted interpretation of the population assisted in this institution? Our analysis results in the understanding that the public assisted in these institutions must be considered from their close relationship with the home, extended family environment, and not specifically because they are sons/daughters of isolated patients; and that the use of these expressions contributes to the process of stigma elaboration.