BETWEEN THE DIAGNOSIS AND THE THERAPEUTICS: NATURAL VARIABLES IN THE REPRESENTATIONS OF SUICIDE IN NEWSPAPERS OF BELÉM IN THE FIRST DECADE OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Abstract

This article discusses the representations of suicide in Belém do Pará in the news, articles, and advertisements published in Belém in the first decade of the 20th century. Suicide, as a subject, was noted to be intermeshed with ele­ments of nature in different senses, and to different goals. Positive or not, these elements were in between the instinct of self-preservation and the incitement to the idea of self-destruction, which were appropriated by the medical discourse to define the limits of normalcy for some local institu­tions such as the Medical Surgical Society of Pará. In this context, suicide was treated as a human pathology, whereas multiple medical theories on the causes and the treatment of the so-called “suicidal mania” were produced. The research also compared newspapers articles and the medical works pro­duced during the first 30 years of the 20th century. It was verified that even the discourse produced out of the academic millieu, e.g. the religious dis­course, employed the same famework to argue against the individual right to decide about ones’ own life. Keywords: suicide, representation, Medicine, Belém do Pará.