Biomedical research and public health in Brazil: the case of Chagas' disease (1909-50)

Abstract

This article analyses two periods in the history of scientific and social legitimization of American trypanosomiasis or Chagas' disease, discovered in Brazil in 1909 by Carlos Chagas, physician and researcher at the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Initially we focus on research during Chagas' lifetime, a phase during which the basic statements of the disease were formulated; then, the action in the 1940s and 1950s by the researchers of the Centro de Estudos e Profilaxia de Moléstia de Chagas, located in Bambui, Minas Gerais, is examined. The validation of knowledge that made the disease a scientifically and socially recognized object occurred through a long process that went beyond not only the event of identification of the new disease but the period in which Chagas and his collaborators broadened their research. Our hypothesis is that the work done at Bambui was responsible for reaching a basic agreement on the pathological specificity and social importance of the disease, and was the basis for its recognition as an important medical problem for Brazilian public health and for its becoming the object of government disease control policy.