"Here comes the Doctor!": sanitation guards, labor relations, and the formation of identity (1930s and 1940s)

In this article we focus on the health workers in the 1930s and 1940s, more exactly the small island of health auxiliaries identified as sanitation guards (although they do not always appear with this name), with the purpose of problematizing and investigating aspects related to the identity of these workers, their professional relations, and their training processes. Our general aim is to answer some basic questions, which in our view have been neglected in the vast literature which deals with health in a historical perspective. Who were these workers? What training did they receive? What identities did they assume in the perspective of establishing solidarities, loyalties in general, and in the sense of social aggregation?