Hygienic care for women in the gravid-puerperal cycle in the decade of 1920

Objective: describe the manuals and their authors and to discuss, analytically, the nursing care culture for the pregnancy-puerperal cycle for the training of nurses. Methodology: historical approach, by the microanalysis strategy, with documents located in Rio de Janeiro and literature of adherence. Results: identified manual "Course of Nurses" (1920) and "Book of Nurse and Nurse (1928)" and four records published in the written and illustrated press. Discussion: the military medical influence was identified. The care prescribed in the manuals revealed that they were aimed at women in the gestational - puerperal state, focused on biological needs with an emphasis on hygiene. Final thoughts: Knowing the culture of care for women in the pregnancy-puerperal cycle is indicative of how and why care in the present time for women, sometimes, do not directly and objectively attend to the expected, possibly due to inheritance left from past.