Person / Era 2

Surgeon General of the Navy Soares de Meirelles

Joaquim Cândido Soares de Meirelles

A physician, he conceived the Rio de Janeiro Medical Society in 1829, today the National Academy of Medicine, and headed the Navy's health service. He is the patron of the Medical Corps.

Born: November 5, 1797, Congonhas de Sabará (atual Nova Lima)/MG
Died: July 13, 1868, Rio de Janeiro/RJ
Field: Medicine and naval health
Patron: Navy Medical Corps

Career

He conceived the Rio de Janeiro Medical Society. Its founding meeting took place on 28 May 1829, and on 30 June he was elected president and full member no. 1. The society became the Imperial Academy of Medicine in 1835 and is today the National Academy of Medicine.

He presided over the institution in 1829 and 1830, in 1833, from 1835 to 1838 and from 1842 to 1848. He edited a medical journal and was a member of the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute and of academies in Naples, Leuven and Paris.

He was Surgeon General of the Navy and later its director of health. As head of naval health, he proposed reforms to the service, including an end to corporal punishment.

A Black physician of great influence in the Empire, he defended in the Chamber of Deputies the equal rights of free citizens of colour. He died in 1868, never having recovered from the typhus he caught in the Uruguaiana campaign of 1865.

Timeline

1797Born in Congonhas de Sabará, now Nova Lima (Minas Gerais), on 5 November.
1829Conceives and presides over the Rio de Janeiro Medical Society.
1835The society becomes the Imperial Academy of Medicine.
1848Speaks in the Chamber of Deputies for the rights of free citizens of colour.
1865Catches typhus in the Uruguaiana campaign.
1868Dies in Rio de Janeiro on 13 July.
1968Named patron of the Navy Medical Corps.

In their words

There is nothing, Mr. President, more degrading, more insolent, more contemptible for a man of mixed race with pride and honour than the fear, sincere or hypocritical, that citizens of colour (...) might join with slaves (...) to obtain what they in fact already enjoy (...) without race revolutions, without massacres

Soares de MeirellesRecordSpeech in the Chamber of Deputies, session of 23 June 1848, recorded in the Annaes do Parlamento Brazileiro, p. 265. Passage transcribed in a scholarly article; the ellipses mark omitted interjections from the shorthand record. The digitized original has not been checked.LIMA, S. C. S. "Joaquim Candido Soares de Meirelles: um médico negro na Corte Imperial (1797-1868)". Revista da ABPN, v. 12, 2020, p. 337

Quote labels: Document (read in the primary source), Record (reliable secondary source), Attributed (circulates without a located primary source).

Legacy

The National Academy of Medicine, which he conceived in 1829, is still active, and the Navy Medical Corps Day, 5 November, marks his birthday.