A carregar...
Publicação
Seeds against Smallpox: Joaquim Vás and the Scientific Translation of Wild Plantain Seeds in Goa
| Nome: | Descrição: | Tamanho: | Formato: | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.33 MB | Adobe PDF |
Autores
Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
In 1914, the Goan doctor António Joaquim Vás revealed to the medical
community that he had discovered and applied, with clinical success, the
curative secrets that wild plantain seeds offered against the effects of
smallpox. Since his discovery in 1894 of the regular use of such seeds
among the Hindu population in the region of Madras (now known as
Chennai) in British India, Joaquim Vás was convinced that he had found a
therapy that would effectively cure the terrible disease of smallpox. In this
historical context, in India—one of the world regions most severely
affected by the virus—Western-style medicine waged an inglorious and
uncertain battle against smallpox, and vaccination was not yet
widespread.1 The hypothesis that wild plantain seeds could cure smallpox
was taken seriously by several Goan doctors. However, the uniqueness of
the news of this discovery contrasts with current historical narratives
concerning the fight against this disease, which suggest that the expansion
of vaccination in the twentieth century led to the historical achievement of
“eradicating smallpox.” But at the time when Joaquim Vás reported his seemingly astonishing discovery, the question of the prophylactic
supremacy of vaccination had not yet been resolved.
This chapter focuses on the narrative of António Joaquim Vás’s
discovery as a starting point to analyze how this type of seed was the
target of a collective endeavor by Goan practitioners of Western-style
medicine, with a view to transforming the seed from an object used in
Indian medicine to a scientific object of therapeutic use in the fight against
smallpox.
Descrição
Palavras-chave
Vás, António Joaquim Goa History of science Portuguese empire
Contexto Educativo
Citação
Roque, R. (2018). Seeds against Smallpox: Joaquim Vás and the Scientific Translation of Wild Plantain Seeds in Goa. In Bala, P. (Ed.), Learning From Empire: Medicine, Knowledge, and Transfers under Portuguese Rule, pp. 174-206. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing