Education of the body and nature: prescriptons in the magazine Educação Physica (Brasil, 1932-1945)

Abstract

The process of industrialization and urbanization in Europe and in Brazil were followed by new ways of looking at nature. Once considered dark and dangerous, nature and its elements start to be understood as beneficial for the recovery of both the health and moral of urban population, and were even prescribed by physicians as a means against urban illnesses. This discourse of a beneficent nature increasingly turned into the correspondent of certain branch of the medical hygienist discourses that started to write articles prescribing and recommending a return to nature. This paper aims to comprehend the prescriptions regarding practices alongside nature disseminated by the magazine Educação Physica, a specialized journal published in Brazil between 1932 and 1935. As a result, we realize that almost all the numbers we analyzed dealt with some aspect related to cure, regeneration or amusement amidst nature, whether through physical exercises, hydrotherapy or the contact with mountains, reaching their peaks. We conclude that this magazine supported this branch of the medical hygienist discourse by associating practices amidst nature to moral, physical and hygienic values desired for the strengthening of Brazilian bodies of that time.