Prophylaxis and treatment of diseases in western São Paulo state: the Sanitation Service and trachoma in the early twentieth century.

In 1906, Emílio Ribas reorganized the Sanitation Service and centralized São Paulo state public health services in the state capital. A campaign to combat trachoma, an ophthalmic disease, was implemented as part of this project. This article analyzes this campaign, which provided care for the sick living on rural properties in a process that predated the 1917 Rural Sanitary Code. The empirical data was obtained from government reports, decrees, medical journals and newspapers. We conclude that Ribas, by creating an organization that integrated the efforts of the sanitary districts and the Trachoma Commission medical teams, sought to form a complex apparatus to combat the diseases present in both urban areas and the countryside.