| Summary: | This article analyzes the presence of spiritism in the academic production of the Rio de Janeiro School of Medicine during the first half of the twentieth century. At that point, spiritism had acquired an unexpected position among religious practices in Brazil, not only among the masses and those of African descent, who integrated it with its preexisting practices, but also in educated urban contexts which, by participating in instances of organized spiritualism, imbued it with a scientific and academic dimension. Doctors sought to deconstruct this scholarly identity by linking it back to what they regarded as the social pathology of African-based religions.
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