Leonardo Africano Ferreira

A Black Physician between Angola, Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe (1830-1870)

Abstract

A Black Physician between Angola, Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe (1830-1870)
This paper analyzes the trajectory of Leonardo Africano Ferreira, black physician and “son of Angola.” The character speaks in the first person, based on sources such as his thesis presented at the Medical-Surgical School of Lisbon and a representation addressed to Angola’s governor-general in 1864. Its main argument is that African identity and the racial component mediated the experiences of the so-called “medical pluralism” in which Africano was inserted, especially within a bureaucratic and hierarchical context that, by the mid-nineteenth century, was established as a health policy for the continent. His professional and personal practices as a doctor-surgeon experienced in different places – Africa, Europe and America – provide elements to understand the inflection to the South Atlantic of subjects against the attempts of Portuguese sovereignty in Angolan territory in the second half of the nineteenth century.