O óleo de chaulmoogra como conhecimento científico: a construção de uma terapêutica antileprótica

Fernando Sergio Dumas Dos Santos,Letícia Pumar Alves De Souza,Antonio Carlos Siani

doi:10.1590/s0104-59702008000100003

Fernando Sergio Dumas Dos Santos, Letícia Pumar Alves De Souza + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/s0104-59702008000100003

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Abstract

The article investigates how knowledge of medicinal plants and related treatment practices are assimilated and transformed. Taking as its focus the use of chaulmoogra oil to treat leprosy, it examines how information on this plant was incorporated and transformed into scientifically validated knowledge when 'Brazilian chaulmoogra' came onto the scene. Pointing to the addition of chaulmoogra byproducts to the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz's production agenda in the 1920s, the study establishes links between productive processes and relates these to the period's scientific context. From the late nineteenth century until the 1940s, chaulmoogra oil was the great hope in efforts to cure leprosy. During this period, chaulmoogric treatment earned a place as scientific knowledge thanks to research studies conducted in laboratories throughout the Western world.

Highlights

The article investigates how knowledge of medicinal plants and related treatment practices are assimilated and transformed
From the late nineteenth century until the 1940s, chaulmoogra oil was the great hope in efforts to cure leprosy
Derived from sulfonic acids by replacing hydroxyl with alkyl radical or aryl, development of these organic compounds followed from research by German biochemist Gerhard Johannes Paul Domagk (1895-1964), who was looking for an effective drug against meningitis, pneumonia, and other bacterial illnesses (IBGE, 2006)

Summary

Antonio Carlos Siani

SANTOS, Fernando Sergio Dumas dos; SOUZA, Letícia Pumar Alves de; SIANI, Antonio Carlos. When Western scientists and physicians learned about the use of chaulmoogra oil to treat skin ailments, laboratories and clinics began verifying the oil’s therapeutic effect, inaugurating the process that led to its inclusion in the norms of Western-style therapeutics This took place around the mid-nineteenth century, when the British Empire was defining policies on the establishment of medical institutions in India with an eye to exploring the potential of traditional uses of medicinal plants and bringing this information together in pharmacopeias and practices that could be used by the British doctors working in those colonial areas (Wujastyk, 2004). A number of seeds planted in Brazil were donated by the United States (Araújo, fev. 1937)

Chaulmoogric treatment

Conclusion