This work intends to analyze the intimate diary of José Vieira Couto de Magalhães, wellknown
Brazilian politician and scholar from the second half of the 19th century, as an
ethnographic registration which informs about top issues of that time and simultaneously
stresses the efforts of an individual in order to build a coherent personality, although the
diary presents itself rather incomplete. By conceiving a private diary as a cultural practice
of shaping oneself’s personality, it is discussed the effect of truth present in this kind of
writing and the implications of its usage in the Social Sciences. The most manifest themes
along the diary are discussed: body, health and disease. As a writer about himself, Couto
de Magalhães, highlights concern about body education and activities practiced by his
contemporary fellow men. Since he was interested on the ideal of hygienic and bourgeois
family, typical in the 19th century, it is evoked themes like homosexuality, dreams,
marriage and medicine. The diary shows the author’s awareness related to the search of
balance between body and mind, in order to allow him reach his ideal of self-control,
besides the attempt to develop and forecast a self-image to the future.
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