On the abominable profession of being a vampire: Emílio Goeldi and Mosquitos in Pará (1905)

Abstract

In the fields of public health and entomology, the turn of the 20th century was marked by an emphasis on insects as transmitters of disease. Physicians, bacteriologists and zoologists perseverently tried to understand the etiology of diseases like malaria and yellow fever and make an inventory of the species of insects associated with disease, studying their scientific and biological classification and establishing procedures to control epidemics. The Swiss zoologist Emílio Goeldi (1859-1917), who was then director of the Museum of Natural History and Ethnography of Pará, in Belém, was an active participant in this scientific network and wrote a number of papers on mosquitos in the Amazon. His ideas and contributions to zoology and medical entomology are the focus of this paper.