We can delineate its influence in terms of vocabulary from a quote from Miguel Bombarda: That moment in the history of Portuguese psychiatry (then emerging and undergoing consolidation) takes shape incorporating the uses of a particular language, the language of degeneration, even when it was fast losing general favor and its death throes became perceptible. His published medical-legal opinions all date from the period in which he was associated with the Lisbon Medicine Faculty and the Medical-Legal Board of the 1st district. He exercised his duties there until the year of his death (Costa, 1941, p.3 Ilharco, 1981, p.6). After the death of Júlio de Matos, Cid began to lecture as the psychiatry chair head (into which forensic psychiatry had been merged) He was designated director of the Bombarda insane asylum in 1923. José de Matos Sobral Cid (1877-1941), in turn, had been sent from Coimbra to Lisbon in 1911 where, together with the Lisbon Medicine Faculty, he assumed the duties of professor of the recently created chair of forensic psychiatry. , assuming the post left vacant upon the death of Miguel Bombarda, who was assassinated by a former patient of his in Rilhafoles on the eve of the republican revolution of October 5, 1910. In 1911 he was appointed "medical director of Rilhafoles and was transferred from the Porto Medicine Faculty to the same position in Lisbon" (p.6) 1 1Īll quotations in this article have been freely translated from the original Portuguese. His appointment as alienist doctor of the Porto Medical-Legal Board occurred in 1899 (Fernandes, 1957, p.6-8). He assumed command of this institution in 1890, following the death of Sena.
Júlio de Matos (1857-1923) entered the Conde de Ferreira Hospital as Sena's assistant in March 1883, when it opened. Bombarda was a courageous polemicist and responsible for the Rilhafoles Histology Laboratory in 1887. Miguel Bombarda (1851-1910), a fervent republican, became, in turn, prominent for reforming the Rilhafoles Hospital, which would be named in his honor after his death. Sena was responsible not only for the foundation of the Conde de Ferreira Hospital, but also the enactment in 1889 of the first Portuguese law to provide assistance to the mentally ill and the first statistical study of alienation in Portugal (Sena, 1884). It was given greater impulse, however, with the personage of doctor António Maria de Sena (1845-1890), who was the first director of the second institution of its kind to emerge in Portugal, the Conde de Ferreira Hospital for the Alienated in Porto, inaugurated in 1883. The process of institutionalizing modern psychiatry (and the expression is pleonastic, since there is only psychiatry in modern times) effectively began in Portugal with the opening of the first hospital for the alienated in 1848, Rilhafoles. It seems to me to be relevant here to note (albeit in a very synthetic form) the context in which Portuguese psychiatry emerges and the work of these three people. In this study, I merely propose to understand and explain the general reach of 'degeneration' among alienists of the period, among whom the personages of Miguel Bombarda, Júlio de Matos and Sobral Cid are prominent. Keywords: psychiatry degeneration psychoanalysis Portugal 19 th century. Its expansive and supposed metatheoretical character became involved in its death throes, coming to be progressively replaced by another model, psychoanalysis. Various phenomena, nosologically described in differentiated forms, came to be integrated into the language of degeneration. 'Degeneration' was instituted as a species of chart, based on which experiences were classified and described with occasionally threatening contours for a certain conception of the social and political order. scope of this article is to show the importance of a highly naturalized model of human actions that, taking as its pivotal point a hereditary explanation, was widely used by Portuguese psychiatry at the close of the 19 th century, in continuity with what was happening in the European context. Professor of the Department of Anthropology/ Universidade de Coimbra. The title "Torrent of Madmen" is a citation/homage to Important moments in this project can be read in Quintais (2002, 2005, 2006). This article results from a broader investigation into the exercise of Portuguese forensic psychiatry at the close of the 19
Torrent of madmen: the language of degeneration in Portuguese psychiatry at the close of the 19 th century * *