Archeological diggings in household garbage deposits from nineteenth-century Rio have uncovered an abundance of equipment used in the elimination of fecal material and phlegm. These findings formed the basis for an analysis and interpretation of the era's attitudes regarding body fluids, as adopted when the mentalities of the new 'bourgeois' segments - then undergoing a process of rise and consolidation - were impregnated by Hippocratic humoralism. The text shows how the introduction of a 'body order' was fundamental in building and keeping the social order in the nineteenth century. It likewise shows how the ideology of hygienization was one of the most important and efficacious strategies for underpinning the bourgeoisie's (victorious) project to achieve hegemony.
intimate hygiene; body fluids; bourgeois way of life; Hippocratic medicine; humoral theory