[Sources for a history of the Brazilian Ministry of health's fifty years].

This article is fruit of a survey of sources on the history of the Ministry of Health that are part of the Fiocruz collection held at Casa de Oswaldo Cruz's Department of Arquives and Documentation. The study spans the fifty years preceding Brazilian Law 1.920 (July 25, 1953), which placed health and education in separate ministries. It was during this period that the foundations which were to sustain public health policies and the ministry's future structure were laid. The study also looks at the activities of the sanitarians and intellectuals who were important actors in the process of ideological construction not only of State structures but of the policies themselves.