The article presents a set of clinical documents, periodicals, reports, laws, decrees, and images about the National Asylum for the Insane dating from Juliano Moreira's tenure as its director and as director of Federal District Assistance for the Insane. In 2011, the material will be available at the site of the Virtual Library on Health in Latin America and the Caribbean: Health History and Cultural Heritage. This material, which includes information on diagnoses, patients, treatments, and the operation of the National Asylum, enhances our ability to investigate the activities of eminent psychiatrists in Rio de Janeiro and their attitudes towards "insanity" and Brazilian society under the First Republic, when Brazilian psychiatry was first gaining institutional form and winning government support.
history of psychiatry; Hospício Nacional de Alienados; clinical sources; archival sources; Brazil
