El Hospicio Nacional de Alienados en la prensa de Río de Janeiro (1903-1911)

During the first decade of the twentieth century, the press of the republican capital disseminated representations and helped to form opinions about the National Hospice of Alienated Persons (HNA), the first Brazilian psychiatric institution, which began to function in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1852. For this investigation we have analyzed the news about the hospice in two newspapers - O Paiz and Correio da Manhã. We follow here the most recent Brazilian historiography, as well as the history of psychiatry in Ibero-American countries, to discuss the emphasis given to the social control function of the asylum and to point out its hybrid and multifaceted character in the news that circulated in the press of the federal capital. In the two newspapers, the varied set of references to the HNA puts into circulation three points of view: the first two express how the institutional life, in its different aspects (administrative, welfare, scientific) is described and portrayed by the press; while the third point of view brings together the situations in which the hospice is considered as a solution for events that disturb the life of the city