Healthcare, Doctors, and Medical Practitioners in Early Modern Portugal

Abstract

The reforms in the area of healthcare, medical teaching, and medical practice that were introduced by the Portuguese Crown in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries shaped the development of the field throughout the early modern period. At the base of these reforms was a dual system of control shared by the Faculty of Medicine and the físico-mor [chief physician]. The king placed the accreditation of degrees acquired abroad in the hands of the chief physician, along with responsibility for licensing individuals who practiced medicine without any academic training. These reforms ran in parallel with the persecution of religious minorities and the implementation of purity-of-blood policies. Together, they put an end to Portuguese doctors’ participation in the European peregrinatio academica [academic pilgrimage] and led to the ostracism and stigmatization of practitioners who had graduated abroad.

A royal edict of November 4, 1545 ordered the restructuring of the medical curriculum to achieve excellence and innovation in medical training in Portugal and to make the University of Coimbra more attractive, especially in comparison with Salamanca. Unfortunately, the edict had conflicting results, which the Crown attempted to mitigate by setting up a scholarship scheme in 1568 for doctors and apothecaries and, in 1608, by guaranteeing employment for Coimbra medical graduates, who would be given priority over doctors licensed or accredited by the chief physician.

Any discussion of doctors and medicine in the early modern period must necessarily address the interactions between healthcare practitioners and the empire. In the Portuguese case, despite the many contemporary publications on indigenous drugs and curative methods, few studies have examined the effects of cultural exchange on medical training and practice either in Portugal or in the lands it occupied. Except in Portuguese India, the Crown did not adopt a consistent policy of imposing European medicine on its conquered territories, nor did it have the ability to do so. Even in Asia, Portuguese dominion was confined to legitimizing local medical knowledge and the hybrid medicine that arose there by incorporating them into the regulatory system emanating from Lisbon.