Gilberto Freyre’s ‘Sociology of Medicine’ and health academic education

Abstract

The essay takes up an argument by Gilberto Freyre in his book ‘Sociology of Medicine’ [1963], that medical education must be sociologically oriented. He considers health a sociocultural fact in a multicausal perspective of social phenomena. Gilberto Freyre had already developed health-related reflections such as food, sexuality, and architecture in his masterpieces on the formation of Brazil, ‘Casa-grande & Senzala’ [1933] and ‘Sobrados e Mucambos’ [1937]. In spite of the forgetfulness of Sociology of Medicine in the Public Health debates that deal with the relations between Health and Social Sciences, this work presents essential questions for the sociological understanding of health field phenomena. In a dialogue with this work, we discuss in this essay, by a kind of enlargment of Freyre's perspective, questions that corelate the sociological orientation and academic background in the field of Health.

Keywords: Gilberto Freyre, sociology of medicine, health education