Abstract
Resumo Harold Howard Shearme Wolferstan Thomas foi um pesquisador da Escola de Medicina Tropical de Liverpool que teve fugaz destaque na medicina britânica na época em que foi deslocado para a Amazônia (1905). Cinco anos antes, uma expedição da mesma Escola estivera na região para investigar a febre amarela. Thomas e Anton Breinl viajaram para Manaus ainda com o objetivo de estuda essa doença. Naquele intervalo, transcorreram processos muitos dinâmicos na medicina tropical, em particular no tocante às tripanossomíases. Thomas ganhou projeção ao demonstrar que o atoxyl era eficaz no tratamento de animais e humanos infectados por tripanossomos. No presente artigo, Thomas é o fio que conduz a uma trama formada por diferentes atores e doenças na América, Europa e África, cujas sinergias revelam contornos da medicina tropical e o lugar nela ocupado pela região amazônica no começo do século XX. Enfatizaremos especialmente as tripanossomíases. Até sua morte em Manaus, em 1931, Thomas envolveu-se com outros problemas de saúde locais e com médicos que lideravam a saúde pública e a medicina experimental no Amazonas - curso discrepante daquele tomado pela maioria dos médicos europeus que participaram de missões em colônias e áreas de influência das metrópoles imperiais. Nos anos 1950, Thomas foi ‘redescoberto’, ao receber (postumamente) parte de um prêmio conferido aos descobridores da cura da doença do sono. Sua memória teve outros revivals em ambientes acadêmicos.
Highlights
Harold Howard Shearme Wolferstan Thomas was a researcher from the Liverpool School of Tropical Diseases who enjoyed brief prominence in British medicine at the time he was transferred to Amazonia (1905)
British and Italian work on malaria transmission was essential to the institutionalization of tropical medicine at the end of the nineteenth century; this area of medicine gained particular relevance in Brazil because of yellow fever
Discoveries related to malaria and yellow fever provided more exposure to teams and institutions from various countries, and brought entomology and other branches of medical zoology to the forefront, alongside new sanitary practices directed at controlling the vectors of diseases transmitted by blood-sucking insects
Summary
In 1890, a disease known as n’gana laid waste to herds in southern Africa and threatened the way of life of the Zulus, whose main activity was raising livestock, and whose insurrections had represented a serious threat to British colonial ambitions in the region. In 1894-1895 in southern Africa, Bruce demonstrated (with the help of Mary) the relationship between the trypanosome found in the blood of sick animals and n’gana by inoculating infected blood into healthy horses, oxen, and dogs, which produced the characteristic signs and lesions of the disease. The suspicion that n’gana was identical to the disease spread by the tsetse fly, mentioned by hunters and explorers, was proven by Bruce when he kept unaffected cattle and horses on a fly-infested plain and confirmed the presence of the trypanosome in the blood of these animals Bruce published a preliminary report in 1895 and another more complete report in 1897 He incriminated Glossina morsitans as the vector of the protozoan, which was soon classified as Trypanosoma brucei, and identified the antelope and buffalo as its wild reservoirs.. At the same time in South America, a horse disease known as mal de cadeiras was linked to T. equinum
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
