ESCOLA MEDICA

[JOHN DE FIGUEIREDO]

Attached please find the following document

"A Goan Doctor in Africa and his “Europeaness”

Titles of previous posts of this series:

Introduction

The Scope of Dr. Bastos' Research

Ideological Framework

Empire vs Nation, Subjects vs Citizens

The Lusified Subaltern Doctors and their Peculiar Medical School 

Please note:

     (a) The attached notes are copyrighted. All rights reserved. No part of this series of posts may be copied, reproduced or transmitted by mechanical, electronic or any other means without my prior permission.

     (b) The opinions expressed on the attached notes are my own and should not be construed as endorsed by Yale University where I teach or any other organization to which I belong.

 

Sincerely,

John M. de Figueiredo

[cristiana bastos]

Dear Dr Figueiredo, 

I am most thankful for your careful reading of the chapter "Medicine on the Edge: Luso-Asian Encounters on the Island of Chiloane, Mozambique", which i wrote in collaboration with historian Ana Cristina Roque. I use this opportunity to share the article with whoever may have an interest in reading it; here is the link for access 

https://repositorio.ul.pt/bitstream/10451/22559/1/ICS_CBastos_Medicine_CLI.pdf 

Articles that come to life as chapters of edited volumes sometimes become forgotten or accessible to very few; we who write them have to choose between having them in the good company of others in a carefully curated volume (as is the case, in my humble opinion, of the volumes Histories of Medicine and Healing in the lndian Ocean World, edited by Anna Winterbottom and Facil Tesfaye at Palgrave) or having it as a solo article, getting more points in academic evaluations and longer afterlives.  I am very happy I published this one in its venue but I always feared it was not read by many.  Thanks to Dr Figueiredo's  careful reading,  it may have a chance to arrive to more pairs of eyes now. 

 I am delighted with a critical discussion of its contents. I do not accept insults and perjuries (false accusations) but I much enjoy criticisms that are supported on reading and on arguments.  Once again, I thank DR Figueiredo and apologize for not having read the previous chapters of what seems to be a volume in the making.   I happened to read this one as by coincidence this is the very chapter I chose, along others on other matters that are not related to Goa, to provide as background reading to my presentation in the HIstory of Science and Medicine seminar at Harvard this week. 

I came across Arthur Ignacio da Gama  through his reports on the island of Chiloane, which i found when researching systematically the sources of the health services of the Portuguese colonial archives for the 19th century (Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisboa).  If I were a film-maker or a novelist i might have gone deeper into  this character: a young doctor who found himself a stranger in a strange land with little support (the health services in Mozambique were minimal, and on that little island were next to nothing), little demand (Africans were reluctant to accept western medicine which came in a package that was not necessarily friendly at the time, to put it very lightly), and, what he did not know but I got to learn through other sources, little time of life in this world. He died young and not much after he wrote the report. 

I worked earlier  on Arthur Gama's report on another chapter published in Portuguese in the early 2000s, "O Médico e o Inhamessoro" - but i always wanted to go further.  Could never accomplish the  project of going to Chiloane -- maybe some day in the future, but it did not happen so far, and in the meantime I am working with very different topics and oter  geographical contexts.  When Anna Wintterbottom invited me for a conference at McGill on Medicine and Healing in the Ocean Indian World in 2010 - the one that led to the two volumes  -- I revisited the case, which seemed made for the theme. And to my great pleasure, in the meantime, I got to know the work of Ana Roque, who is a specialist on Mozambique and had worked about  Ezequiel da Silva's herbarium of Chiloane.  Working with her  was a pleasure -- those rare moments when two different researchers converge in sharing  findings that took each of them years to gather and think through... and when the end result is more than the sum of the parts. 

A couple of notes. As much as I sympathized with the subject and character of Arthur Gama, and wanted to write about him, I had to deal with the fact that through his writings there were some comments about Africans that were terribly racist. Maybe I toned down the citations in this chapter. Transcribing them makes me feel bad -- they were quite offensive and it is one of the things that most bothered me along the project on colonial medicine was having to deal with that sort of language used at the time.  Equally offensive, and abundant, were the comments written by Portuguese supervisors about Goan doctors serving in Mozambique: horribly racist against Indians in general -- offensive to my eyes.  Reading those documents through and through got me to what became my understanding of the difficult position of 19th century Goan doctors recruited to serve in Africa -- despised by their Portuguese supervisors, and often expressing despise for the Africans around them. But this is what came out of the sources -- I cannot go back in a time travel to talk to them, hear them, and have a more sophisticated perception of what they went through. One thing i know: it was a 19th century experience, pre-Berlin conference, and extremely different than what may have been the experiences after the first WW. 

Maybe I tend to edit out of my writing the direct quotation of those discourses -- if I have an "ideological bias",  it is that of my commitment to oppose racism and not perpetuate it  by transcribing racist language (anti-African, anti-Asian, etc). Otherwise, I think that readers can judge by themselves whether I support my analysis on evidence or not -- I totally accept different interpretations, but I would think that it is very clear that the evidence is there, in multiple footnotes and an appendix that provides the sources to know the  year of graduation of Arthur Gama. 

I will be more than happy to help clarify any further point. However I apologize for the fact that at the moment I am overwhelmed with the end of the semester at UMass Lowell, where I taught for this term, and at Harvard, where I spent the semester as visiting researcher to complete some writing projects; I have to wrap everything as I will soon go back to my bassi in Lisbon. 

Thank you all for reading, and thanks DR Figueiredo for your criticisms. 

cristiana

PS: more articles can be downloaded here: 

https://cristianabastos.org/

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[JOHN DE FIGUEIREDO]

Dear Cristiana,

Thank you for your message. There is no rush whatsoever at addressing the issues I raised. In fact, it may be better to wait until I am completely done with my comments. I will indicate by writng "The END" at the end of my last coment. If you did not receive my previous posts (and for some reason looks like more than one member of this listserv did not receive them) I will be happy to send them to you.

Regarding Dr. Gama: As I indicated in my post, I had no access to his report and based my comments strictly on your publication.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

John

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[V M]

Thank you, Dr. Bastos, for continuing this exchange in the spirit (I
believe) it was sparked from in the first place. Already, it has been
highly educative, in separately profound ways that will surely
continue to evolve.

I wonder if it would be possible for us to get access to the
letters/reports of Arthur da Gama?

Warm regards from Goa,

VM

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[Valmiki Faleiro]

I endorse Vivek's every word!

This is the spirit of debate between civilised individuals.

In the process, I have benefitted much -- info of the Escola Medica I had no idea about before.

I hope that Dr. John de Figueiredo's labour of love leads to an authoritative volume on the subject (he is, after all, an alumni of that institution and son of her last Portuguese-era director and first Indian-era dean). Such a book would be a much welcome addition to info available on Goa.

And best to researcher Cristiana Bastos, whose work I have cherished before -- and definitely will in future.

Best, v

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[lourdes fatima bravodacosta]

I was not surprised to read Cristiana's mail. Didn't expect anything different. This is the way academics discuss. Both João (Bebé) for those of us who know   him from his Goa days and Cristiana are  well known  academics. Both are my friends and I agree with  Valmiki nd Vivek. 
The discussions have  revisited and revived the history of Escola Médica with new data. 

Best regards, 

Maria  de Lourdes

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[Victor Rangel-ribeiro]

Dear Cristiana, a beautiful response and clarification. Thank you for posting it.

Um forte abraco,

Victor Rangel-Ribeiro

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[cristiana bastos]

Thank you Victor and lourdes for your kindness - i had missed tis thread.

 Vivek, the report is published in my article  Bastos, C.(2004)O Médico e o Inhamessoro: O relatório do goês Arthur Ignacio da Gama em Sofala, 1879. In : João de Pina Cabral e Clara Carvalho (Eds.)A persistência da história: passado e contemporaneidade em África , pp.91-117Imprensa das Ciências Sociais[Capítulo de Livro]

I am afraid I do not have it in digital format but many universities may digitize for you. YOu can ask the IMprensa de Ciencias sociais or the Biblioteca of ICs

 many thanks 

Cristiana Bastos

PI, ERC Adv Grant "The Colour of Labour" THank you victor for your kind words. 

Institute of Social Sciences | University of Lisbon | Av Anibal Bettencourt, 9 | 1600-189 Lisboa, Portugal 

https://cristianabastos.org/

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[John de Figueiredo]

Thank you, Lourdes, for your kind words. 

Your parents were excellent nurses and among the kindest people I have known.  Those days we were all like a big family. We could sleep with our windows open. If someone was sick, the neighbors came right away to help.  I will never forget how your parents helped me when my grandmother suddenly died from a stroke while my parents were away in Portugal.  I was 13 at the time and did not know what to do. For your mother I was always a baby because she had helped me come to this world. She was always in a good mood. I only remember her smiling and with a great sense of humor. The nurses at the Hospital Escolar and the nuns who kept the hospital super-clean are unsung heroes and will always be dear to my heart.

John (João Manuel)

Sent from my iPhone

On May 2, 2023, at 7:21 PM, cristiana bastos <bastosc...@gmail.com> wrote:



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