INTRODUCTION

This study is part of a larger investigation aimed to analyze the processes of production and circulation of prescriptions for the education of the body that, privileged at a given time were able to legitimize and authorize discourses and pedagogical purposes, not only in schools but also in other times and places of social life.³ More specifically, our investigation prioritized the study of a manual entitled Domestic, medical and hygienic gymnastics or representation and description of gymnastic movements, first published in Leipzig, in 1855, by the physician Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber and addressed to parents and educators.⁴ In the established historiographical operation, this manual was taken as a particular scale of observation because it contains, elements for the analysis of the relationships established between the education of the body and the education of morals and will and the intersections between the so-called nature of bodies and the processes of rationalization and methodization of knowledge about body movement. We start from the assumption that the different systematization/planning exercises gave gymnastics a place of excellence among the ways of educating bodies in Modernity, opening possibilities for the production of other strategies of affirmation of a pedagogical authority over the body, for example, the school subject Physical Education.⁵

The gymnastics manuals, model forms of systematization, here considered as cultural productions, added to the exercise practices a real effect on the health of the body and the prolongation of life, in a close relationship with the containment of impulses, with the belief of that there is a natural/biological body and with the establishment of a love/hate for the body both at the level of “each one” and at the level of culture.⁶

Concerns and interests related to the education of the body sparked the production and propagation of an infinity of gymnastics manuals throughout the 19th century, and Schreber's is just one more. Also, other studies show us how gymnastic exercise prescriptions were also present in several medical works and also in manuals indicated as pedagogy and hygiene⁷ From Europe, gymnastics understood as the “art of developing the organism through well-directed exercises” (^{LAURET, 1881}, p. 79) becomes a widespread therapeutic and educational practice, gradually reaching its wide acceptance and social legitimation. We can consider that the printed matter, in the form of compendia, manuals, treaties, or regulations, contributed greatly to its dissemination and popularization. Some were produced with the target audience of teachers who were involved in the teaching of gymnastics in schools and high schools, others intended to reach a larger audience, such as printed strategies for the propagation of knowledge and medical and/or hygienic guidelines that aimed to prevent or cure illnesses.⁸Many of these manuals produced in Europe were circulated in different Latin American countries, both in their original languages and through translations, showing the exercises of appropriation and resignification.⁹ By scrutinizing elements of this cultural circulation, we were interested in identifying some adopted authorial and editorial strategies, as well as the “fabrication”, exercises present in the various translations to identify how the printed texts confer and add truth effects to certain knowledge about the body.

In Brazil, the manual Domestic, Medical, and Hygienic Gymnastics or the representation and description of gymnastic movements was adopted as a reference for teaching gymnastics in different regions and represented as a method of vast notoriety (^{PUCHTA, 2015}). Starting from a mapping done in the country, he became interested in knowing the two translations that circulated here - one published in Lisbon &91#;1879], and another, in Rio de Janeiro (1887) - paying attention to the fact that they may have acted as mediators in the popularization of medical-pedagogical knowledge attributed to Dr. Schr8 eber. No less important was getting to know this doctor-author, some relevant aspects about the context of the work's production, and the transformative paths arising from its circulation and appropriation.

ABOUT THERAPEUTIC AND ORTHOPEDICS

From the end of the 18^th century to the first decades of the 20^th century, gymnastics, as a “methodical art”, a “directed exercise”, receives special attention and makes up body care, in an incisive way. As ordered systematizations, the manuals participated in the cultural production of a modern discipline of “straightened bodies” (^{VIGARELLO, 1978}) or of “straight bodies” (^{SOARES; FRAGA, 2003}), capable of interacting in the industrial, urban, feverish, and massified 19^th-century world. Especially from Europe, these works containing regulated exercises were integrated with other texts that guide health and hygiene, not only of the individual body but also as a constituent part of the guidelines and routines of the institutions (schools, nursing homes, sanatoriums) constituting the modern Nation-States in affirmation. Gymnastics manuals included ways of educating the bodies of children and adults, men and women, giving established texts and images (usually present) a model status, both for what was explicitly announced, spoken, as well as for the implicit elements, expressed in a veiled way. Terms such as “rational”, “therapeutic”, “methodical”, “scientific”, with a view to “correction” and “regeneration”, composed a lexicon capable of conferring authority and legitimacy to a set of orthopedic and hygienic guidelines, usually accompanied by descriptions indicative of their effects not only on the body and its diseases but also on the spirit, morals or will. As the epigraph in the introduction to the Portuguese edition of Schreber's manual announces, “For the life of the spirit to remain in full prosperity, the body must preserve its strength and activity” (^{SCHREBER, &91#;1879}], p. 7).

A social expectation was built up, gradually and cumulatively, that gymnastic exercises could remedy the ills, wear and tear, and losses identified in the body and, often, related to the objective conditions of life, intrinsic to progress. ^{Santner (1997}), in dialogue with the work “The human motor” (^{RABIMBACH, 1992}), which analyzes the fatigue and debilitation that threatened the optimistic bets on progress, discusses the derangements related to Modernity, in its relationship with the body, and argues:

The prospect of the waste of human energy and the power of work generated not only fears of decline and even cosmic death, but also a new social ethic of energy conservation and a proliferation of research projects aimed at maximizing the productivity of the “human-machine”, as well as for the minimization of the “obstinate subversion of the body by modernity” (^{SANTNER, 1997}, p. 20).

Faced with the techno-scientific challenges to make the body perform, the idea of prosperity of the spirit associated with the expectation of modernization of life (not without attention to the harmful effects of this on the body) were recurring themes in the systematization of gymnastics. Commonly represented by machines, speed, or the urban, the idea of progress would also start to summon a given “nature of bodies” and harmonious exercises would be a possible way of returning to a kind of “lost nature”. In this perspective, a way to compensate for “the decrease in the strength of the organs, the imbalance and disturbance of natural functions, the invasion of many serious diseases and, finally, premature death” (^{SCHREBER, &91#;1879}], p. 7). The compensatory nature of gymnastics was given. To save the body from the evils of progress, it should approach what was as “natural” as possible for bodily functions.

However, based on the actions and displacements of different individuals, some of these European gymnastic manuals have also been adopted in other parts of the world as artifacts that are part of civilizational bets. If conceived as antidotes to the problems of modern life, such medical-pedagogical devices were, at the same time, used as disciplinary strategies against the “barbaric” and “deformed” bodies of non-European countries, where the “nature of bodies” should be, once again disciplined. Thus, gymnastics was emphasized to alleviate weakness, vagrancy, laziness, as corrective prescriptions and bodily and moral alignments were equally affirmed as possibilities for the domestication of “ruffled”, uncivilized bodies, which brought rebellious impulses capable of opposing development and progress that, in colonizing practices, were affirmed as inexorably ideal paths.¹⁰ Thus, represented as docile and disciplined, as sick and neurasthenic, as subversive and disruptive of order, the body was present in the medical-pedagogical debate, recapitulating a classic question: how is it possible to educate it?

Gymnastics as well as school institutions made up the modern civilizing project and, as such, have frequented debates related to the History of Education, especially from the dialogue with a French tradition of investigation, which takes the body as a historical-cultural construction (^{LINHALES; SILVA; 2020}; ^{AZEVEDO; LIMA, 2021}). In this perspective, gymnastics and hygiene manuals, among others, have been examined as objects and sources in historical research, confirming the potential of these documents for the historiography of the field. As vestiges of the ways of acting on the body, many of these manuals indicate, either by the textual and imagery content they convey or by their materiality as an artifact of the literate world, the effects of truth and science they represented: modeling to educate the body. No less relevant has been to investigate the processes of circulation and the transformative dimension present in the uses and appropriations that were made of these books. Thus, this study prioritizes one of these manuals among many others adopted as medical-pedagogical guidance for the practice of gymnastics in Brazil, seeking to extract from the dialogue with the historicity that carries some reflections and characteristics on the topic.

SCHREBER: PECULIARITIES OF AN AUTHOR, CLUES ABOUT HIS WORK

Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber was born in Leipzig, in 1808, in the then Kingdom of Saxony. As a member of a bourgeois family, he studied Medicine in his city and, as a doctor, he assumed different positions throughout his career. He was a professor at the same university where he graduated, as well as director of the Orthopedic and Medical-Gymnastic Institute in Leipzig. Through this institution, he affirmed his notoriety and authority as a specialist in orthopedics (Fig. 1) in the urban scene of that city and was also summoned to guide and prescribe on topics related to public health and hygiene (^{NIEDERLAND, 1981}; ^{ISRAELS, 1986}; ^{SANTNER, 1997}). In the education area, he showed greater interest in the different ways of educating the bodies, but above all in gymnastics.

Source: ^{Israëls (1986}, p. 64).

Figure 1 Headquarters of the Orthopedic and Medical-Gymnastic Institute 

From a survey carried out in the Bavarian State Library collection,¹¹ we identified thirteen different titles by Schreber, showing the intensity of his production in a short period: the 1840s and 1850s.¹². There are several published works, being Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik the most translated into different languages ​​and the one with the most editions. Among the topics covered in the works, there are topics related to the medical field, aimed at clinicians and colleagues (medication dosage, cold water healing method, peculiarities of children's bodies) to topics related to education, aimed at parents, teachers, and educators. The studies on harmful attitudes and habits to children, the medical view regarding the school system, popular education, and the approximation between home and school deserve attention. However, we verified that Schreber dedicated more specifically to the relationships between bodily exercises, health, and spiritual refinement.

It is also relevant to comment that Schreber became known in Germany (especially in Saxony) from the “Schreber Associations”, created to preserve the doctor's memory after his death in 1861. These associations were responsible for disseminating one of the creations attributed to Schreber: the Schrebergärten. It is the construction of small urban gardens, initially intended for the education of young children and, later, developed as spaces to be occupied by people of all ages. According to ^{Santner (1997}, p. 15), “Numerous texts on public health, early childhood education and the benefits of fresh air and exercise inspired the creation of these gardens at the end of the 19^th century”.

The theme of the Schrebergärten and their relationship with the movement called Lebensreform (Reform of Life) are objects of analysis by ^{Paiva et al. (2018}) and ^{Vaz (2020}), seeking to understand them as experiences forged in the transition between the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Vaz locates the relevance of urban gardens and the purposes of Dr. Schreber in his works on gymnastics, provoking us to think, based on the contributions of critical theory, more specifically on the work Dialectics of Enlightenment (^{HORKHEIMER; ADORNO, 1985}), the close relationship between mastery of the body and control of nature. He adds to his analysis the need to nuance this criticism, “Inviting for research based on other studies that address the diversity of practices linked to Lebensreform in society to continue being researched” and indicating that, “through the somatic, a story is also told” (^{VAZ, 2020}, p. 15). Certainly, there are many possibilities announced for the writing of a history that addresses the varied contributions of the German doctor and his works, based on different interpretative keys.

Finally, another no less important aspect about the author of Domestic, Medical, and Hygienic Gymnastic is the controversy concerning his family environment. Some aspects that are sometimes analyzed as Schreber's disciplinary rigidity can be perceived in the education of his children. In this topic, we highlight the famous case of paranoia that affected Daniel Paul Schreber, his third son, and other unusual facts, including the suicide of Daniel Gustav Schreber, the eldest son.

Among the several clinical cases described and analyzed by Freud in his exercises of demarcation of the structures and mechanisms of functioning of the human psyche, there is the so-called Schreber Case, which deals with the illness of Judge Daniel Paul Schreber, in a detailed way (^FREUD,2010). It is a case of notoriety for the history of psychoanalytic thought, like the Dora Case, Anna O., the Wolf Man, the Homosexual Young Woman, Little Hans, among others. However, we found a difference in the Schreber Case from the others that Freud did not clinically assist Judge Daniel Paul Schreber, as occurred in so many other cases studied and later recorded by him. In this study dedicated to paranoia, Freud used the book entitled Memoirs of a nervous patient, written as a kind of autobiographical account and through which the judge intended to make public his illness experience. Freud argues that, in Schreber's son's writing, when he mentions God, his main reference would be the father “transfigured” into someone capable of “miraculous cures” with the patients who worshiped it. In the exercise of understanding the relationship between father and son, he asks a question to the reader: “Is there a greater expression of derision by such a doctor than saying that he understands nothing about living men and knows how to deal only with corpses?” ^{(FREUD, 2010}, p. 69). In the brief remarks he makes about Dr. Moritz Schreber, Freud recognizes its importance in the medical and educational field:

Now the president judge's father had not been an insignificant man. It was Dr. Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber, whose memory is still preserved today by the Schreber associations, particularly numerous in Saxony &91#;…]. His reputation as the creator of therapeutic gymnastics in Germany is evidenced by the many editions that his Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik had among us (^{FREUD, 2010}, p. 68-69).

We can assume that Daniel Paul Schreber's autobiographical account impressed Freud, because, even with its characteristics of a delusional narrative, it was established in detail, as a unique and unique effort to produce meanings about himself. This way of interpretation highlights the inventive protagonism of Schreber´s son in the face of his illness. These and other representations of the case also constitute possibilities for analyzing and questioning the meanings given to education and health in Germany in the last decades of the 19^th century. The ways of educating bodies and the justifications for the methods and norms shared by father and son help us to interpret the effects of a given Modernity and its bet on reason and the disciplinary and irreversible idea of progress.

ABOUT THE DOMESTIC, MEDICAL, AND HYGIENIC GYMNASTIC MANUAL

Of the works published by Schreber, the one that obtained the greatest diffusion was certainly Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik (Domestic, medical and hygienic gymnastics), becoming well known in Germany and abroad. Not by chance, among the books located in the Bavarian State Library, it was the one with the largest number of copies present in the collection. This manual was widely disseminated in its first publication and reached a circulation of 300 thousand copies throughout its 32 editions by Friedrich Fleischer (^{ISRAËLS, 1986}, p. 242). Popularized, the work was very quickly translated into at least seven languages (^{ISRAËLS, 1986}, p. 244).

In its various German editions since 1855, the manual of Dr. Schreber was entitled Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik oder System der ohne Gerät und Beistand überall ausführbaren heilgymnastischen Freiübungen als Mittel der Gesundheit und Lebenstüchtigkeit für beide Geschlechter und jedes Alter (Domestic, medical and hygienic gymnastics or representation and description of gymnastic movements that do not require any apparatus or extraneous assistance and can be performed at any time and place for use by both genders and all ages, accompanied by applications to different conditions). Thus, it announces, in its initial name, a broad claim to scope. Figure 2 shows two versions of the covers, publications of the aforementioned manual, carried out in the city of Leipzig, by the publisher Friedrich Fleischer, respectively in 1867 and 1899. In their first editions, the covers did not include images, as would happen later, even emphasizing the relevance of the book for both men and women.

1867 edition. Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer. Source: Biblioteca Estadual da Baviera. 1899 edition. Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer Source: Collection of Cemef/UFMG

Figure 2 Covers of two editions published in German 

With enormous notoriety in Europe in the second half of the 19^th century, the book was very quickly translated and republished. If we take the translation exercises as interested and contextualized practices of appropriation, it becomes relevant to consider the uses, additions, deletions and so many other forms of “cultural fabrication” to which this manual was submitted. In Portugal, the translated work by Julio de Magalhães, with an indicative date of 1879, received the title of Gymnastica domestica, medica e hygienica, or representation and description of gymnastic movements that do not require any apparatus or extraneous assistance and can be performed at any time, for both genders and all ages, accompanied with applications and different conditions (Fig. 3-A). In Brazil, the version translated by Ramalho Ortigão and published in 1887 by Typografia Gazeta de Notícias, received a rather reduced title: Gymnastica de quarto, hygienica e therapeutica (Fig. 3-B).

A- Portuguese edition, published in Lisbon, with translation by Julio de Magalhães, 1879.

Figure 3 Covers of two editions published in Portuguese 

In Spain, the translation by D. Estéban Sanches de Ocaña, published in 1861 by Libreria D. Carlos Bailly - Extranjera y Nacional, Cientifica y Literária, was named as follows: Manual popular de gimnasia de sala, Médica e hygiénica o representacion y descripcion de los movimientos gimnãsticos that, requiring no apparatus for their execution, can be practiced everywhere and by all classes of people of both gender. Figure 4 shows the cover of a facsimile edition, from 2010, in size 14.5 cm x 10.5 cm, which refers to the 14^th Spanish edition, from 1891, brings not only images but also different colors. Both the number of editions carried out in the second half of the 19^th century and the recent initiative to reproduce it in an identical format show the relevance of the work among the Spanish people, as a “popular manual”.

Source: Collection of Cemef/UFMG

Figure 4 Facsimile edition of 2010, published in Valladolid by Editora Maxtor 

With variations in their titles, all the editions brought 45 images that, interspersed with the texts, fulfill the function of demonstrating, in drawings of male bodies, the prescribed exercises. The proposal is presented as a “medical and hygienic” contribution of paramount importance:

The possibility of carrying out the precepts that form the system of domestic gymnastics everywhere, and of accommodating them to all circumstances, results in the fact that this system is the most convenient means of establishing the indispensable harmony to the highest degree of civilization, as well as the fact that it can never be completely replaced by any other usual order of movements (^{SCHREBER, &91#;1879}], p. 44).

From a methodical systematization, with exercise classifications and an indication of sequences for execution, the manual gains centrality as an exemplary piece. The appeal to “harmony” is addressed to the body and also indispensable to the “highest degree of civilization”. As a justification presented by Schreber for the publication of this gymnastics manual, we found his conviction that the body should be aligned with the laws of nature.

The processes whose practices we advise in the present book constitute a system in every way following the laws of nature, in which through a civilized life, in its highest and most sublime progress from day to day, could be brought into and maintained in complete agreement with the fundamental laws of the human organism, through which the development of our body can be benefited and defended from the innumerable imperfections by which it can be affected, and finally through which the flights of our spirit can be established on definite bases, which give them are indispensable (^{SCHREBER, &91#;1879}], p. 4).

Quite explicitly, he identifies the sublime and the beneficial on the side of methodical and well-defined work, while claiming that the body is composed of similar laws. The exercises should be used based on the division of gymnastics into three branches: medical, hygienic, and therapeutic gymnastics. Therapeutic gymnastics was recommended to remedy certain imperfections and diseases of the organism whose origin, in Schreber's understanding, could be deduced from a greater or lesser lack of body movements. Hygienic gymnastics had a preventive character, that is, it was not intended to cure, but to preserve the individual from these diseases and imperfections, aiming at maintaining health. Medical gymnastics was known for linking these two different branches of gymnastics, defined and applied by the German physician.

Home gymnastics could be performed individually, in any location, and without the use of the equipment and the help of other people. The manual has a wide range of exercises, especially for limbs and joints. In his method, all the musculature of the body, through the movements of the head, shoulders, trunk, arms, and legs, should be worked. The prescribed exercises, in addition to being designed (both male and adult bodies), are accompanied by brief explanations about the different effects caused in the body. The manual is also composed of series and/or groups of exercises with different purposes. A sequential imagery record containing the 45 exercises was found as a supplementary appendix in a German edition of the year 1903 (Fig. 5)

Source: ^{Schreber (1903}).

Figura 5 45 exercises of Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik 

In Brazil, the Moritz Schreber manual, although not characterized as a school manual, was officially adopted in public primary education in the State of Paraná, in 1882. The work also circulated in other Brazilian states, such as São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro. Elements that also attest to the circulation of works by the German orthopedist, especially domestic, medical and hygienic Gymnastics, are the citations made to him in the first gymnastics manuals published by Brazilian authors. This was the case for at least five different titles, as shown by Diogo ^{Puchta (2015}) in his thesis. They are: Manual theorico-pratico de gymnastica escolar, published in Rio de Janeiro by Pedro Manoel Borges, in 1888; Gymnastica nas aulas: manual theorico-pratico, published in São Paulo by Manoel Baragiola, in 1895; the Compendio de gymnastica escolar, published in Rio de Janeiro by Arthur Higgins, in 1896 and 1909; and the book Homem forte, published in Curitiba by Domingos Nascimento, in 1905. We can highlight that the circulation of ideas occurs through the circulation of the work. Possibly, Schreber's book was the gymnastics manual that most circulated in Brazil in the final years of the 19^th century. In addition to the two versions published in Portuguese, versions in German were also circulated in our country.

The circulation of Domestic gymnastics… on Brazilian soil contributed not only to the process of schooling physical exercises, making gymnastics a mandatory school practice (^{PUCHTA, 2019}), but also fostered part of the understanding and knowledge about physical education and gymnastics in the period. The presence of Schreber in other works, integrating the recommendations and prescriptions published in other manuals published in Brazil, shows us how this author also participated in the discussions on physical education and gymnastics in the period. His work aggregated a set of ideas about the body, education, and civility, shared from a common background (^{PUCHTA, 2015}). Poignant themes of the period were prescribed in an orderly and illustrated way in the manual, and still carried the authority of a renowned German doctor, a specialist in children. In addition to Brazil, we mapped the presence of Schreber's work in other Latin American countries. Domestic Gymnastics… also integrates collections from neighboring countries such as Argentina and Colombia, and can also be consulted in the collection of the.¹³

Despite his emphasis on educating the body, Schreber always stressed the importance of attention devoted to the formation of the spirit. In other words, their concerns fell on both aspects of life, reconciling them in a “harmonious” way and understanding such choices as (re)education of the “nature of bodies”, especially children, degenerated by what was considered “harmful” in society. social life. It is about the incorporation of habits and behaviors, especially in children, and how to control and regulate them. The Doctor. Schreber updated, through his manual and other prescriptions, some ideas already in circulation since the 18^th century. In the treatise L’Orthopedie ou l’art de preven et de correger dans les enfans, les dieformités du corps, published in 1741, Nicholas ^{Andry (1741}) also used nature as a model to justify the correction of bodies. This nature is to be guided and directed according to certain premises and ideals of life, growth, and development.

A GYMNASTICA DE QUARTO, PUBLISHED IN 1887 BY GAZETA DE NOTÍCIAS

In 1887, a new version of Domestic Gymnastics… began to circulate in Brazil. It was the first Brazilian edition, translated by Ramalho Ortigão and published by Gazeta.¹⁴In the Brazilian edition, the first change already appeared in the title of the work, translated as Gymnastica de Quarto…. However, the proposal was the same. That is, room gymnastics, as well as domestic gymnastics, consisted of “A specific plan of joint movements capable of being performed without apparatus and extraneous assistance and therefore consecutively and in any place” (^{SCHREBER, 1887}, p. 3). Aiming at promoting health, gymnastics in the room should be adopted as a preventive measure, without therapeutic purposes and, therefore, without the use of the equipment and the help and supervision of a doctor. According to Schreber, in Ramalho Ortigão's version,

Room gymnastics can be performed anywhere, in a living room, in a garden, under trees, in the bath tent, at home or on the road, without the help of provisions or private equipment, without assistance from other people, as the Swedish gymnastics demands, and that could, in short, be applied in all circumstances, having only the will as a guide (^{SCHREBER, 1887}, p. 4).

Thus, what would make room gymnastics an accessible and popular practice was precisely the bet on the ease of memorizing the movements and performing the exercises, so it was massively recommended to all readers who became aware of it.

The Brazilian edition of 1887 is a shorter version, even simplified in the use of words, compared to the Portuguese edition, translated by Julio de Magalhães, much closer to the original work. We found that some parts such as the preface, the introduction, the eleven series of exercises presented at the end of the book and the conclusion were suppressed. Such series was dedicated to the treatment of different ailments of the organism (the “special cases”), such as congestion and chronic headaches, and chest pains, to activate and complete breathing and remedy the narrowness of the chest cavity, against symptoms of muscle paralysis, to help the normal development of the whole body, among others.

Box 1 Subdivisions of the Portuguese and Brazilian editions of the Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik 

In addition to the suppression, we identified some changes in the published content, which seemed to be aimed at the general population and no longer at physicians responsible for specialized therapeutic services. Although the wording of the 45 exercises with their respective images was preserved, the descriptions were synthesized and reduced when compared to the Ginástica domestica…, which did not always make the text enlightening for the reader. Perhaps Ramalho Ortigão bet that the drawings would speak for themselves. The translator did not formulate something new, but he impoverished the work, giving it another intelligibility. From the point of view of publishing interests, the simplification made would make the book cheaper and more accessible. Transformed into a kind of booklet or newspaper insert, Schreber's work would reach a much larger number of Brazilian readers. If text and printed matter are distinct, although inseparable elements (^{CHARTIER, 1990}; ^{GALVÃO; MELO, 2019}), we can say that the “Schreber Carioca” and its Gymnastics in a room… seems increasingly distant from Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik's “Schreber of Leipzig”.

Analyzing some editions of Gazeta de Notícias, we noticed that, each year, the newspaper offered prizes to new subscribers or to those who renewed their subscription for a year or a semester. Among the prizes offered were the Almanac da Gazeta de Notícias and a series of books, such as Gymnastica de Quarto…. In the year 1893, for example, an annuity subscriber could choose to receive the Almanac or two books from the prize list. Those who subscribed for six months could keep the Almanac or a book of their choice. All these titles present in the newspaper's list of publications could also be purchased separately. In the case of Gymnastica de Quarto…, each copy was sold for 1,500 réis, a median price among the other works.¹⁵

In dialogue with ^{Galvão and Melo (2019}, p. 228), we can consider that “the text seeks to establish the idealized reader. However, the terms of the real reader, his strategies, his signs, allow us only to imagine him, to glimpse him”. It may be that some Brazilian readers of Gymnastica de Quarto… have made regular use of the method, as prescribed by the German orthopedic doctor, to the point of memorizing each of the exercises and their respective functions and repetitions. It may be that others had their preferences, practicing and memorizing just a few of the exercises. Still, others could have included new practices, extracted from other works, establishing different configurations in a “cooperative relationship” (^{GALVÃO; MELO, 2019}). Many others, even in possession of the book, may not even have put into practice anything that was prescribed, leaving gymnastics aside, without leaving the plane of will.

In the introduction of Schreber's work, a section absent from the Gymnastica de Quarto…, the author argues as follows, in defense of the purposes of its publication:

There is an accessory advantage, which, for the spirit, is not mediocre in importance, and which we must therefore attend to. It is as follows: by regularly applying all our willpower to the execution of the effective manifestations of bodily activity, striving with perseverance to overcome the lack of energy and bodily inertia, we arrive, as a forced consequence, and psychologically speaking, at the normal domination of the spiritual part of our individual over the entire body, to a progressive increase in willpower and general strength of action, to the firmness of character, to the courage necessary to withstand the adversities of life, and finally to perseverance. In this way, the most dangerous moral enemy is vanquished, against whom, in a great number of chronic diseases, the most careful and well-chosen bodily treatment cannot do anything (^{SCHREBER &91#;1879}], p. 21).

However, in the version of the Gazeta de Notícias, the corporal prescription, the number of repetitions, the immediate prescriptions became more relevant than the moral purposes, and the high and sublime progress so refined and desired by Dr. Schreber. The commodity format, symbolically revealed by the status of a commercial award, seemed to offer gymnastics a new configuration.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

The study allows us to affirm that the translations, as strategies of appropriation and cultural circulation, allowed this work to have a remarkable reach in different countries. We can suppose that reinventions, simplifications may not have occurred everywhere. On the other hand, it is also remarkable to notice that the disciplinary rigidity that guided the production of Moritz Schreber, with several elements of moral disciplining added to it, seems to have been lost along the way, becoming a recipe, a good mold, of how to do gymnastics.

The analyzes presented here also confirm the potential of research that promotes connections between the various books and manuals produced by Dr. Schreber and the one established by his son Daniel Paul. In chapter XI of Memoirs of a nervous patient, entitled Damage to physical integrity through miracles, some fragments of the text call our attention:

From the beginnings of my connection with God until today, my body has been an uninterrupted object of divine miracles. If I wanted to describe all these miracles in detail, I could fill an entire book. I can affirm that there is not a single limb or organ of my body that has not been for a time injured by miracles, not a single muscle that has not been miraculously stretched, to set it in motion or paralyze it, according to the purpose. targeted. &91#;…] it must be considered as contrary to the Order of the World any situation in which the rays, essentially, only serve to inflict damage on the body of an individual or to play some trick on the objects with which he is occupied (^{SCHREBER, DP, 1984}). , p. 153) (emphasis added by us).

For Marilene Carone, translator of Daniel Paul Schreber’s book in Brazil, the recurrence of the term “miracle” in the work concerns the “event that goes against the laws of nature, generally of a certain duration, operated by God or by his representatives” (^{SCHREBER, 1984}, p. 456). In general, they are harmful actions, causing aggression to the body and, from them, Daniel Schreber delusionally denounced that his bodily integrity had been threatened. Many other details in his Memories… remain worthy of our attention and investigation: broken ribs, torn nerves, torture with the head tying machine, miracle of chest compression, decrease in body size, finger paralysis, bone corrosion, among others. If Judge Schreber represented bodily perceptions and their effects; his father, through his Domestic Gymnastics… and other manuals, intended to produce exactly the prodigy of willpower and firmness of character:

There is an accessory advantage, which is not mediocre in importance to the mind, and which, therefore, we must attend to. It is this: by regularly applying all our willpower to the execution of the effective manifestations of bodily activity, striving with perseverance to overcome the lack of energy and bodily inertia, we arrive, as a forced and psychologically speaking consequence, at the normal domination of the spiritual part of our individual, over the entire body part. To a progressive argument of willpower and strength of action in general, to the firmness of character, to the courage needed to overcome life's adversities, and, finally, to perseverance. In this way, the so dangerous moral enemy is defeated (^{SCHREBER, &91#;1879}], p. 21).

Comparing the contrasts between such representations has allowed us to identify the relationships of dependence between them and to resume the debate about love/hate for the body. The particular Germany of the Schrebers (father and son) offers clues about the attempt to build a “world order” and its failures, as well as allowing us to relate the methods of educating the body with the production of “hasty-manufactured men”. Both expressions, used in the Memories…, are keys to reading both the body in Modernity and methodical gymnastics as a long-lasting antidote against the risks that threaten vital capacity.