[The aesthetics of degeneration and expressions of the alienated: readings from Júlio Dantas at the Rilhafoles Hospital].

The proposal of this article is to briefly present how artistic expressions of the alienated appear as a discursive element in medical and critical readings of Júlio Dantas, starting with his thesis, Pintores e poetas de Rilhafolles, which he presented in 1900 as the conclusion to his medicine course in Lisbon. This particularly involves investigating the methods Dantas used in his invested and conceptual propositions on this topic, considering that his interests responded to very specific issues: the characteristics and forms of social degeneration. The article also reviews some of the reverberations in the social and artistic environments that were insulted by the publication of the thesis.