Dissertation sur les vers plats articulés qui existent chez l'homme, ou considérations sur la détermination de leurs espèces, des maladies qu'ils occasionnent, et du traitement qu'ils convient mieux de leur opposer (1831)
Bernardino António GomesCavTEComCComSE (22 September 1806 – 8 April 1877)[1] was a Portuguese physician and scientist. He is perhaps most widely remembered for his pioneering work in Portugal in the field of anaesthesiology, as the first physician in the country to use chloroform in a surgical procedure (on 12 January 1848, during a knee tumorectomy); he is also credited with the popularization of the use of creosote and of the first ether inhalers.[2]
Biography
Bernardino António Gomes was the son of noted physician, pioneering dermatologist, chemist, and botanist of name, Bernardino António Gomes Sr. (1768–1823), and his wife Leonor Violante Rosa Mourão (1775–1864).[3] He was baptised on 9 October 1806, in the parish of Santa Engrácia, Lisbon.[3]
Bernardino António Gomes distinguished himself during the yellow fever and cholera epidemics that ravaged the country in the 1850s. He was sent as a national delegate to the third of the International Sanitary Conferences (in Constantinople, 1866); in opposition to Pettenkofer's anti-contagionism that dominated the scientific thinking of the conference, Bernardino António Gomes was a staunch defender of the theory of contagion and considered it advisable to ban all maritime communication to quell the ongoing cholera pandemic that had begun in the Ganges Delta, "to combat the scourge in the very countries in which it is born or, at least, to halt its progress as near as possible to its original home" (measures that were opposed, notably, by the delegates from the United Kingdom).[4][5]
In 1858, Bernardino António Gomes became embroiled in a heated pamphlet war with the Duke of Saldanha, one of the leading promoters of homeopathy and other systems of alternative medicine like mesmerism or the "Raspail method" in the country. The tone of the replies quickly escalated, with Bernardino António Gomes protesting that the Duke was hardly an authority when he clearly had so little baggage and was armed with such lacking medical literature — something, he wrote, that did not stop him from openly casting doubt on science and making the public mistrustful of medical practitioners.[6]
He was appointed First Physician of the Royal Chamber in 1864, by King Luís I, following the death of Francisco Elias Rodrigues da Silveira, 1st Baron of Silveira; Gomes refused the title of Baron that was customarily bestowed upon those filling that position at court.[2] Previously, he had already been a personal physician to his brother and predecessor King Peter V — Bernardino António Gomes was responsible for conducting and publicising the results of the King's autopsy in 1861, when tensions were running high as three deaths in quick succession within the Royal Family (the King, Infante John, Duke of Beja and Infante Ferdinand) had made the public suspicious of foul play and threaten to mutiny; he attributed the deaths to typhoid fever.[7]
As a natural historian, Bernardino António Gomes published an exhaustive review of the fossil flora of the Carboniferoussystems in Portugal (1865), and was a contributor in the Catalogus Plantarum Horti Botanici Medico-Cirurgicae Scholae Olisiponensis (1851).[8] He also oversaw the committee in charge of creating the 1876 Portuguese Pharmacopoeia, the first time the country's official pharmaceutical reference work was drawn up by a committee of select physicians and chemists.[9]
^ abcdefPereira e Sousa, F. (1890). "Dr. Bernardino Antonio Gomes". A Imprensa (in Portuguese). No. 65. Lisbon. pp. 132–134. Retrieved 18 October 2020.
^ abcdefLopes, Alfredo Luiz (1890). O Hospital de Todos os Santos hoje denominado de S. José: Contribuições para a Historia das Sciencias Medicas em Portugal [All Saints' Hospital, today called of Saint Joseph: Contributions for the History of Medical Sciences in Portugal] (in Portuguese). Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional. pp. 72–74.
^Almeida, Maria Antónia Pires de (2014). "Combatendo epidemias: Bernardino António Gomes, Sousa Martins, Ricardo Jorge, Câmara Pestana, Almeida Garrett, Fernando da Silva Correia". In Rollo, Maria Fernanda; Nunes, Maria de Fátima; Esperança Pina, Madalena; Queiroz, Maria Inês (eds.). Espaços e Actores da Ciência em Portugal (XVIII-XX) (in Portuguese). Lisboa: Caleidoscópio. pp. 309–326. hdl:10071/12242. ISBN9789896582746.
^Conceição, J.; Pita, J.R.; Estanqueiro, M.; Lobo, J.S. (2009). "As farmacopeias portuguesas e a saúde pública" [Portuguese pharmacopoeias and public health] (PDF). Acta Farmacêutica Portuguesa (in Portuguese). 3 (1): 47–65. ISSN2182-3340. Retrieved 18 October 2020.
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