Aleixo de Abreu was a Portuguese physician and tropical pathologist. He is known as the author of the earliest book published in 1623 on tropical medicine, titled Tratado de las siete enfermedades, describing amoebiasis, malaria, typhoid fever, scurvy, yellow fever, dracontiasis, trichuriasis, and tungiasis.
Background
Ethnicity:
The surname Abreu is particularly prevalent among those of Portuguese and Sephardic Jewish descent.
Aleixo de Abreu was born in 1568 in Alcácovas, Alentejo, Portugal. Abreu was named for his grandfather, captain of an India galleon, who was killed in Malacca in 1500.
Education
Abreu entered Evora University in 1577 and graduated as bachelor of arts about 1583. Afterward, against his parents’ wishes, he studied medicine at Coimbra University on a royal scholarship, and seven years later graduated as a licentiate of medicine.
Career
Abreu practiced medicine in Lisbon with little success until, thanks to his father’s friendship with Count Duarte de Castelo Branco, in 1594 he was appointed physician to the governor of Angola, Joño Furtado de Mendonsa, with an annual salary of 24,000 reis. In Sao Paulo de Loanda he was both physician and colonizer, helping with slaves and horses in the conquest of that territory.
From 1604 to 1606 Abreu was in Brazil with the governor, Diogo Botelho, and served as surgeon during the Dutch attack on Bahía de Todos os Santos. During his tropical sojourn he contracted amoebiasis and yellow fever. In 1606 Abreu returned, ill, to Lisbon, and in 1612 was appointed physician to the treasury officials, a position he had to relinquish in July 1629 because of his poor health. Abreu was of sickly constitution and was very seriously ill in 1605, 1614, and 1621. On this last occasion he began to write a book describing his illness—which lasted five months—and including clinical reports of a case of malaria and of a kidney ailment, a discussion of phlebotomy, and an account of certain tropical diseases he had suffered from or had observed in Angola and Brazil.
The name Abreu gave to yellow fever, enfermedad del gusano, or bicho in Brazil, has led to confusion because he incorporated in that description the gusano Trichuris trichiura, a worm found in the rectum in some cases. His account of headache, pain in the lumbar region and the thighs, fever, vomiting, ulcers, and sudden death in otherwise strong young people is clearly recognizable. Abreu also described the Tunga penetrans or Brazilian tungiasis, the flea that penetrates the skin of the foot, usually around the toenail, and the Guinea worm, the macrofilaria Dracunculus medinensis, which grows to the thickness of a violin string, together with the techniques used by the natives to extract the parasites.
Views
On this last occasion Aleixo de Abreu began to write a book describing his illness—which lasted five months—and including clinical reports of a case of malaria and of a kidney ailment, a discussion of phlebotomy, and an account of certain tropical diseases he had suffered from or had observed in Angola and Brazil. He also observed the disease in slaves, sailors, and travelers arriving in Lisbon after long sea voyages from Brazil and the Orient; his postmortem examinations and his therapeutic preparations made of green vegetables are noteworthy.