Medicine as “social philosophy”

Domingos Guedes Cabral and the thesis “Functions of the Brain” (1875)

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the ideas developed in one of the first Brazilian Darwinist works, the thesis “Funcções do Cerebro” (Functions of the Brain), submitted to the Faculty of Medicine of Bahia by Domingos Guedes Cabral in 1875. The thesis was rejected and huge polemics followed in the newspapers of the city of Bahia (currently, Salvador). As a consequence, Guedes Cabral left the city. The students did not accept the interference of the Faculty in the work prepared by a student to conclude his course, striving for the thesis to be published as a book in the following year. The Church – which some analysts of the episode claim to be responsible for the rejection – was also unsatisfied and launched an attack on the young doctor, which tried to prove in his thesis the inexistence of God. This was an important episode in Brazil’s intellectual history and, thus, it is important to grant direct access to the ideas of this thinker. This is the goal of this paper, which aims at presenting the central ideas and the development of the arguments in Guedes Cabral’s thesis, with emphasis on his approach to medicine as a social philosophy. We will discuss, in particular, those fragments of the thesis that are more relevant to an attempt to elucidate the reasons why the Faculty of Medicine of Bahia behaved in an authoritarian manner and rejected the work of Guedes Cabral.