The decline of Dom Pedro II's empire and health: Neurophatogenic implications

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to know the medical doctors of the Emperor, the preconized treatment, and the knowledge about diabetes at that time, its repercussions on the Emperor's nervous system, and the related political implications. A narrative revision was made, based on primary and secondary sources. Dom Pedro II was examined by the aristocracy of the medicine at the time, especially Jean-Martin Charcot, amongst the doctors of international reputation, and Cláudio Velho da Motta Maia, amongst the Brazilian doctors. Charcot diagnosed in the Monarch: mental stress, diabetic neuropathy, and a cerebral vascular lesion, probably a stroke, that he differentiated from other vascular obliterations elsewhere. He demonstrated his knowledge about diabetic neuropathy, possible topographical alternatives to justify the urinary incontinence, and Dom Pedro's weakness in the legs. Throughout his illness, Dom Pedro II presented others manifestations that contributed to his physical fragility, and that, certainly too, to his political decline, deposition and the proclamation of the Brazilian Republic.