Tropical medicine in Portuguese: the role of human trypanosomiasis for Portuguese-Brazilian medical-scientific relations (1901-1923)

• Grant number: 19/02786-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: September 02, 2019
• End date: March 01, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Science
• Principal Investigator: André Mota
• Grantee: Ewerton Luiz Figueiredo Moura da Silva
• Supervisor: Isabel Maria da Silva Pereira Amaral
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FM). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
• Associated to the scholarship: 17/18101-9 - Tropical Medicine in Portuguese: the role of human Trypanosomiasis for Portuguese-Brazilian medical-scientific relations (1901-1923), BP.DR

Abstract

This project aims to contribute to the historiographic debate on the medical-scientific relations between Brazil and Portugal under the scope of tropical medicine in the early twentieth century. Through consultation with the main medical journals published in both countries, it is hoped to understand the repercussion in Portugal of Brazilian research on Chagas' disease, which was simultaneously an emblem of the country's science and a symbol of a nation and the resonance in Brazil of the research on sleeping sickness, which acquired great importance for Portugal as a result of its African colonial empire.The temporal beacons lie between 1901 - the year of sending the first Portuguese scientific mission to Africa in order to study sleep sickness - and 1923, when a controversy was officially closed in Brazil about the authorship of the discovery of the disease of sores. Thus, this study is located in a historical context of a wide scientific debate about these two diseases where Brazilian and Portuguese doctors offered their contributions.