O impacto da II Guerra Mundial na obra de Aldo Castellani: a sua influência na escola portuguesa de medicina tropical (1946-1971)

Abstract

The end of the WW2 is a crucial milestone in the narrative of tropical medicine. It reorganizes not only the geopolitical map as well as the scientific and medical map of a consolidated medical area setting networks of knowledge, interests and global development strategies. The portuguese singular position in the international scene pointed particular dynamics in relation to tropical medicine, in particular as concerns the circulation of foreign researchers in the country for political reasons. It is in this context that Aldo Castellani (1877-1971) arrived in Lisbon in 1946, following the King Umberto II (1904-1983), of the House of Savoy (Italy), in his political exile. At the time, an expert in tropical medicine, internationally renowned, Castellani was admitted to the Institute of Tropical Medicine (IMT), as a teacher and researcher, despite being contentious element in the discovery of the causative agent of sleeping sickness, a controversy which involved portuguese mission led by Anibal Bettencourt in 1901, in Angola. In Lisbon he remained for 25 years leaving his documentary legacy to the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (IHMT), which will be used as a bibliographic resource in this work. To reflect on the path of Castellani in exile in Portugal, his career and the european tropical medicine, strongly marked by political agenda, we seek to answer the following questions: how Castellani was influenced and influenced the portuguese school of tropical medicine? How to integrate the case of Aldo Castellani in a broader agenda of interpretation of the effects of IIa World War in the definition of health policies in the portuguese context in the second half of the twentieth century?