Tropical Medicine and The Portuguese Colonies (1887-1942)

Description

The specialization of biomedical sciences in Portugal at the beginning of the 20th century was result of the transition of a monarchic regimen to a liberal one. This process leaded for the "generation of 1911", a group of intellectuals led by doctors, was in result, an institutional and scientific revolution with several repercussions on social, economic and politic agendas.\nIn this context the Tropical Medicine appeared as an autonomous scientific area, that since 1887 tried to fight for its status of independence, by the work developed by the naval doctors in the Portuguese colonies. The economic and political interests had established a perfect alliance with the scientific research in this medical field and, in 1902, the first School of Tropical Medicine, was created in Lisbon. This school was renamed after 1942 by Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (IHMT). This institution evidenced already the typology of the modernization of the Portuguese medical education that would to be consolidated with the creation of the Faculties of Medicine in 1911 and with the successive reforms of medical education that privileged experimental education and the scientific research, in detriment of the bookish knowledge. The singularity of the emergence of the School of Tropical Medicine before the Faculties of Medicine leads to the interest for the study of the intervention of the naval doctors in the context of the colonial politics developed by the Portuguese State. The School would serve as a pole of scientific development from the colonies and is still as centre of learning for doctors. This interchange of knowledge will be responsible by the consolidation of a new specialty in Portuguese medicine. With this work it is intended to analyze the Portuguese contribution in the scope of the Tropical Medicine between 1887 and 1942, in the context of colonial (national and European) project, from which the Schools of Tropical Medicine of Liverpool and London had participated too.