A Associação Brasileira de Medicina do Trabalho: locus do processo de constituição da especialidade medicina do trabalho no Brasil na década de 1940

Abstract

This article analyzes the Brazilian Association of Workers' Medicine, created in the end of 1944 as a space for consolidating occupational health as a medical specialty in Brazil. The Association was founded by the first group of specialists in the field of occupational hygiene and medicine with seat at the facilities of the proper Ministry of Work, Industry and Commerce, where the founders were working. Counting on an initial core group of 35 physicians and five engineers, all of them coming from the Ministry, the main objective of the Association was to study, discuss and promote the issues related to workers' medicine. Among the most relevant activities promoted by the Association were the monthly scientific meetings (with lectures held by invited physicians and physicians and engineers of the Ministry itself), the organization of scientific events and the publication of a specialized periodical. In 1945, only one year after its foundation, the Association passed to make part of the International Bureau of Safety at Work, with seat in Montreal, Canada, and the International Bureau of Work of the International Labor Organization. In December 1945, on occasion of the election of the new board of directors, the Association created the Journal of Workers' Medicine, whose first issue was published in 1946.