“Health Care and the Spread of Medical Knowledge in the Portuguese Empire, Particularly the Estado da Índia (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)”

Abstract

This article deals with the presence of physicians, surgeons and apothecaries in the early modern Portuguese empire and the dissemination of medical knowledge there. In Portugal itself, the health care sector had been the target of considerable royal interference since the final years of the fifteenth century, during the construction of the early modern state. Regulatory frameworks were established to harmonise health care practice throughout the country and to control the organisation and distribution of the available health care practitioners among local communities. As this was also the time when Portugal was investing heavily in its colonies, how were these policies reflected in the empire? Did health care feature in the Portuguese government’s colonial strategies? How did the official policy to send medical personnel overseas work on the ground? Did it operate at a large enough scale to transform local practices?