José Pinto Azeredo and “The Birth of the Clinic”. A Reference in Portuguese Medicine

Abstract

In academic circles and among historians, the work of
the doctor José Pinto de Azeredo has been made known
in recent years. This clinician worked in Brazil, Angola and
Portugal at the end of the 18th century and the beginning
of the 19th century and left a valuable medical legacy lying
dormant for more than two hundred years in national libraries and archives. With the support of the Gulbenkian
Foundation and the work of a large luso-brazilian team, four
volumes have now been recovered and published, allowing
the dissemination of his remarkable work. It follows the movement described at the same time by Michel Foucault in his
seminal work, “Naissance de la Clinique” as the emergence of Modern Medicine. Presented and disseminated at Conferences and Symposia in the Literature and History circles,
it is only right that this work should be made known to the
wider medical community. Pioneer in its time in many aspects, in addition to the beauty and clarity of its prose, it
maintains a surprising relevance for the new medical generations and in particular for internists.