Bernardino António Gomes, Sr. - Lisbon, Portugal
N 38° 43.102 W 009° 08.976
29S E 486994 N 4285534
A bust of Bernardino António Gomes (1768-1823), not to be confused with his son of the same name, is located in the Jardim Botânico da Universidade de Lisboa in Lisbon, Portugal.
Waymark Code: WM9VA6
Location: Lisboa, Portugal
Date Posted: 09/30/2010
Views: 16
"Bernardino António Gomes (Paredes de Coura, 1768 - Lisbon, 1823) was a physician and Portuguese botanist who served in the first half of the nineteenth century. He studied several plants from Brazil and isolated cinchonina.
Life
He studied medicine at the University of Coimbra, where he completed his doctorate in 1793. After his PhD, was a doctor in Aveiro, where he remained until 1797, the year he was appointed physician of the Royal Navy. Later that year, embarked for Brazil, where he remained until 1801. In 1802 was commissioned to quell an epidemic of typhoid fever on board a Portuguese fleet in the Strait of Gibraltar. After two months had managed to solve the problem. In 1810, following a new outbreak of typhus that struck a Portuguese fleet in Gibraltar, were transported to the Lazareto in Trafaria, 445 patients successfully treated. Following his service at sea, he worked at the Navy Hospital and the Hospital Militar in Lisbon. He left the navy medical career in 1810. In 1817, he was named Physician of the King's Chamber. He was elected member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Lisbon in 1812. This Academy has promoted, in 1812, the creation of Vaccinia Institution, which was devoted to smallpox vaccination. In 1817 , the number of inoculations reached 17 000. In 1817, he was assigned to provide medical services to the Princess Leopoldina of Austria, betrothed to Don Pedro, the future Emperor of Brazil, when it shifted from Livorno to Rio de Janeiro. He stayed six months in Rio de Janeiro, after which they returned to Lisbon. Not to be confused with his son the same name, who was born in Lisbon in 1806 and graduated in Medicine in Paris and in Mathematics in Coimbra.
Work
During their long stay in Brazil, which was then a Portuguese colony, Bernardino António Gomes studied several species of medicinal plants. In the period from 1798 to 1822, he published (in Portugal and Brazil) a number of reports describing the morphology and pharmaceutical properties of plants and Brazilian Portuguese, as well as reports on the incidence and treatment of infectious diseases. In 1812, founded the institution Vaccinia in Lisbon, of which BA Gomes was the first director and had as objectives widespread vaccination in Portugal and to promote scientific progress and public welfare. Thus, together with other doctors, BA Gomes started vaccination in Portugal. The papers published that had a major impact on the international scientific community. Of these works, there is the so-called isolation by crystallization cinchonina, the active substance in the bark of cinchona. The cinchonina been used since the seventeenth century, as a febrifuge. Much of his work was developed in the Chemical Laboratory of the Mint, in Lisbon."
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