"Marriage for love with a scientific basis"

Historical analysis of the Municipal Service of Eugênia based on the Rio de Janeiro press of the 1950s

Abstract

This article analyzes the Premarital Assistance Service, created in 1951 in the city of Rio de Janeiro by physician Francisco Rodrigues Salles Netto, and its reformulation in 1956 as the Municipal Eugenics Service, through a bill proposed by city councilman Wilson Leite Passos. It is argued that both founders are heirs to the eugenicist ideas of the First Republic in Brazil, guided by “positive eugenics” and strongly influenced by neo-Lamarckism, which defends the transmission of acquired characteristics or those influenced by the environment. There was concern about immorality, seen as a condition that could be inherited by future generations. Based on analyses of the Rio de Janeiro press, we highlight how the Service, which sought to promote morality and the improvement of the Brazilian people, in addition to physical health, changed the construction of an ideal, rational and morally superior society. The study contextualizes the persistence of this thinking in a period of intense economic and social transformations in Brazil and exposes how the Service used premarital exams and marital guidance policies to achieve its goals. The analysis thus reflects on the complex relationships between science, morality and public policies in Rio de Janeiro in the 1950s, where there was room for the manifestation of eugenic ideals as a means of shaping society for the benefit of national progress.