The enfermeiro-mor (head-nurse) in Santas Casas in the province of Minas Gerais: between care and administration.

This article focuses on the perception of nursing as a low-prestige occupation in the 19th century. The history of nursing produced by professionals in the area supported this understanding. However, the profile of the enfermeiro-mor (head nurse), a position in the Santas Casas, demonstrates that the nursing profession was present throughout a broader social spectrum.

Black women in nursing history: the cultural competence in Maria Barbosa Fernandes´ trajectory.

Objectives: to know the professional trajectory of the black nurse Maria Barbosa Fernandes and to analyze elements of her professional practice based on the cultural competence model of CampinhaBacote.

Methods: historical-social study with an analysis of the findings in light of the Cultural Competence model.

Results: Maria Barbosa was the first black woman to earn a nursing degree at the Escola de Enfermagem Carlos Chagas (Carlos Chagas Nursing School) (1935-1938), and the documentation about her history allowed us to infer the experience of discrimination and invisibility.

Liberating critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire in the scientific production of Nursing 1990-2017.

Objective: To analyze the theoretical and methodological application of Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy in the scientific production of nursing.

Method: An integrative review was carried out with consultation of the databases: LILACS, BDENF, MEDLINE, PUDMED and CINHAL. We included studies in the Spanish, English and Portuguese languages, published from 1990 to 2017.

[The creation of hospitals by charities in Minas Gerais (Brazil) from 18th to 20th century].

This article is the fruit of research into the cultural heritage of healthcare in Minas Gerais (Brazil) and explores the construction of hospitals supported by Catholic charities from the 18th to 20th century. Catholicism has always been strong in Minas Gerais, partly because the Portuguese Crown prohibited the free travel of priests, who were suspected of illegally trading in gold from the mines. A brotherhood was responsible for creating the first Santa Casa, in Vila Rica.

[About smallpox and vaccination practices in Minas Gerais (Brazil) in the 19th century].

This article discusses the impact of smallpox and vaccination practices used against the disease used in the province of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, during the Imperial Period (1822-1889). Despite the existence of services responsible for the organization and dissemination of the vaccine in the country since the early 19th century, some administrative and cultural factors, as identified in documents produced by the province's public health authorities at the time, had a negative impact upon the full implementation of both practice and organization of services aimed at the dissemination of smallpox vaccination. Based upon historiographic sources, it is argued that despite the trend towards centralization observed at different governmental spheres during the structuring of the Imperial State, in particular, in the provision of vaccination services, there was a prevailing disharmony between the different agencies responsible for the implementation and management of such services.

Health education through analogies: preparation of a community for clinical trials of a vaccine against hookworm in an endemic area of Brazil.

Background: Obtaining informed consent for clinical trials is especially challenging when working in rural, resource-limited areas, where there are often high levels of illiteracy and lack of experience with clinical research. Such an area, a remote field site in the northeastern part of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, is currently being prepared for clinical trials of experimental hookworm vaccines. This study was conducted to assess whether special educational tools can be developed to increase the knowledge and comprehension of potential clinical trial participants and thereby enable them to make truly informed decisions to participate in such research.

Popular beliefs about the infectivity of water among school children in two hyperendemic schistosomiasis areas of Brazil.

This article examines changing common knowledge of elementary school children to scientific knowledge related to the relationship between water characteristics and the transmission of schistosomiasis through health education. A review of the literature and two case studies from rural elementary schools in Brazil show how the prevailing concept of dirty and polluted water, which has operated as an epistemological obstacle for acquiring scientific knowledge, may be related to symbolic thought and cultural parameters. Through an educational intervention not commonly applied to health programs involving elementary school students in two schistosomiasis-endemic rural communities in Brazil this paper describes the difficulties researchers encountered in changing the prevailing perception that very dirty and polluted water provides optimal conditions for schistosome transmission, to the scientifically accepted view that transmission occurs most often in visually clean, although fecally contaminated water.