The medicine luso-Brazilian: institutions, doctors and ill populations in Salvador and Lisbon (1808-1851)

Abstract

Este trabalho apresenta um estudo comparado das instituições, dos saberes e das práticas médicas em Portugal e no Brasil na primeira metade do século XIX. Em Portugal, selecionamos como locus de investigação o Hospital São José, em Lisboa; e no Brasil, o Hospital São Cristóvão, localizadoem Salvador - Bahia. Identificamos quais as ferramentas intelectuais utilizadas pelos médicos e cirurgiões para explicar e tratar dos doentes e seus males, questionando a visão corrente da historioia acerca do atraso da medicina luso-brasileira, neste período; quando e por que estes hospitais, que nasceram associados à caridade e foram administrados pela Irmandade da Misericórdia, se transformaram em espaços de cura; e qual o perfil das populações que construíramo cotidiano destes nosocômiosThe main subject of the present work was to carry out a comparative study of institutions, medical knowledge and medical practices in Portugal and Brazil, in the first half of the nineteenth century. In Portugal, we selected as research focus the Hospital São José, in Lisbon; in Brazil, we chose the Hospital São Cristóvão, located in Salvador, Bahia. We found the intellectual tools that had been used by physicians and surgeons to explain and to treat sick people and their illnesses, and we questioned the current historiography vision about the “underdevelopment” the Portuguese and Brazilian medicines. We studied also when and why these Hospitals, who were associated to charity when they had been created, became cure spaces, and we described the people who had built the everyday life of the hospitals