Based on a socio-historical perspective, the present article discusses the problematization of the race issue in psychiatric knowledge by analyzing the scientific production developed by the Hospice of Juquery and its daily operations, through access to records of its asylum practices. The studied period, 1898 to 1920, includes the creation of the institution and its management under Franco da Rocha, its founder, a time when the debate about the free man and its significance to the nation’s formation began to take shape. The source text was extracted from the clinical medical histories of inpatients, as well as the records and scientific production developed by the institution during the studied period.
Psychiatric institution; Madness; Black; Hospice of Juquery; Black madness