(The Brazilian Public Health Service resolves to send its delegates to hold conferences among workers in factories and offices as a means of combating tuberculosis.)
To be a worker and married are practically synonymous! A worker cannot be understood without having a wife and at least four or five children. Currently earning what he earned five years ago, while at the same time the cost of housing and goods is of necessity going up, quadrupling in value, a poor devil who earns $6-10 a day has to live in a shed without hygiene of any kind and eat bread kneaded by the devil…
But… Hygiene thinks it has discovered “bread honey” by developing its theories for factories and offices in solemn rhetoric against tuberculosis.
What will these doctors say to the workers? This: look for good, comfortable and airy rooms; Have a good time, eating well; rest three months a year in Poços de Caldas [spa city north of São Paulo], etc… etc…
Doubt it? Go attend these conferences.
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1913)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 