“Hypnotics” in the metropolis: Africans in the Colonial Hospital of Lisbon during the early twentieth century

Abstract

At the start of the twentieth century, some Portuguese physicians traveled to Africa to study sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasis). One was Ayres Kopke, a member of the first medical mission to Portuguese West Africa and professor at the School of Tropical Medicine. After returning to Lisbon, Kopke continued his research, which included observation of patients brought to the metropolis. Starting in 1903, health departments in the colonies were responsible for sending patients with certain exotic diseases to the Colonial Hospital of Lisbon. Based on documents from this hospital including photographs of patients (who at that time were called “hypnotics”), this article discusses the importance of human experiments in Lisbon for advances in tropical medicine during the colonial period.