[Germanism and medicinal bathing in the early days of health resorts in Rio Grande do Sul].

In the early days of bathing resorts some German immigrants were found not only among the bathers, but also among the entrepreneurs of the incipient branch of 'curism-tourism'. It was a small group of immigrants of urban origin who, in general, already knew the curative or reinvigorating advantages of the baths in European bathing resorts. Among them, doctors were prominent, important emissaries of a scientific discourse in favor of bathing resorts. The therapeutic practices of bathing in the sea arrived to meridional Brazil with the European immigration of the second half of the nineteenth century, although its diffusion only took place in the first half of the following century, when the first bathing beaches in Rio Grande do Sul were developed.