The article looks at an important chapter in the institutionalization of 'applied science' in Brazil. It is not a study of scientific suppositions or paradigms but of images from the history of the institutionalization of science in São Paulo. It examines an institution that was strengthened over a number of decades, under a leadership that Robert K. Merton was to call 'catalyzing'. Using invaluable iconographic material left by the sanitarian and physician Geraldo Horácio de Paula Souza, it was possible to reconstruct not only an important period in the professional life of this great sanitarian, who was at the helm of the Institute of Hygiene (embryo of the Universidade de São Paulo's present Public Health School), but also the early days of the creation of this São Paulo institute.
São Paulo Hygiene Institute; Geraldo Horácio de Paula Souza; history of health; memory of health
