Medicina Legal entre Direito ou Medicina: o caminho de sua institucionalização no Brasil

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to analyze the establishment and operation of Legal Medicine chairs in Brazilian medical and law schools in the 19th century. The study focused on the logistics and political features underpinning that process, including the procedures for hiring professors and notions of the Legal Medicine that were taught. In addition, attention was also paid to the ties that bind Europe and Brazil as to the institutionalization of science, with particular emphasis on Portugal s apparent lack of interest in establishing higher education courses in its American colony, as well as on the influence exerted by Legal Medicine on Law. The basic assumption underlying the present study is that the institutionalization of a definite field of knowledge demands explicit recognition of the need of specific training, research practice, divulgation and application of the knowledge thus produced. The study is based on an exploratory and descriptive survey of the literature, which was analyzed according to the epistemological, historiographical and historical approach proper to History of Science. Results show that, by the end of the 19th century, Legal Medicine had established programs for training, research, divulgation and application of its specific knowledge, which allows to infer that it achieved institutionalization as an autonomous field of knowledge