Raimundo Nina Rodrigues (4 December 1862 – 17 July 1906) was a Brazilian coroner, psychiatrist, teacher, writer, anthropologist and ethnologist. A notable eugenicist, he was also a dietologist, tropicalist, sexologist, hygienist, biographer and epidemiologist.
Nina Rodrigues is considered the founder of Brazilian criminal anthropology and a pioneer in studies on black culture in the country. A nationalist, he was the first Brazilian scholar to address the theme of black people as a relevant social issue for understanding the racial formation of the Brazilian population, despite adopting a racist, nationalist, scientistic and deterministic perspective, in his book (1890–1905).
Life
His parents were Colonel Francisco Solano Rodrigues and Dona Luísa Rosa Nina Rodrigues, who is believed to be a descendant of a group of Jews fleeing persecution in the Iberian Peninsula. Nina was born on the Primavera Farm, in the municipality of Vargem Grande, Maranhão, where he spent his childhood under the care of his Black godmother, who helped his mother with her seven children. He married Maria Amélia Couto Nina Rodrigues, known as Dona Maricas, and the couple had only one daughter, Alice, who died soon after her father. He was also the son-in-law of Councilor Almeida Couto and brother-in-law of Alfredo Thomé de Britto, director of the Bahia School of Medicine from 21 August 1901 to 4 June 1908. He was married to Dona Júlia de Almeida Couto Britto.
He studied at Colégio São Paulo and at Seminário das Mercês in São Luís. According to his own accounts and those of his classmates, he appears to have been in poor health. In 1882, he enrolled at the Bahia School of Medicine, continuing his studies until 1885, when he transferred to Rio de Janeiro to complete his fourth year of medical school. He returned to Bahia the following year, where he wrote his first article, on leprosy in Maranhão — "A Morphéa em Anajatuba (Maranhão)".
Returning to Rio in 1887, he completed his studies on 10 February 1888, defending his thesis, "Amiotrophias de Origem Periférica" (Amyotrophias of Peripheral Origin), on three cases of progressive paralysis in a family. In 1888, he practiced medicine in São Luís, maintaining an office on the former Rua do Sol, present-day Nina Rodrigues Street. In Maranhão, he conducted research on the local eating patterns, publishing his results in the newspaper Pacotilha. Because of one of these articles, in which he attributed the health problems of the poor population to poor nutrition, he was nicknamed "Dr. Dry Flour". In 1889, he became an adjunct professor of Clinical Medicine at the Bahia School of Medicine. During this time, he dedicated himself to writing articles for the Bahia Medical Gazette, becoming its director in 1891. That same year, he was transferred to the chair of Public Health, becoming a professor of forensic medicine. He attempted several times to create a specific qualification for medical experts, which only came to fruition years later. Misunderstood and hostile to his fellow doctors, he decided to escape the provincialism and the derisory nickname, returning that same year to Bahia, which would be his permanent home.
On 5 April 1906, Rodrigues was appointed as a delegate to represent the Bahia School of Medicine at the Fourth International Congress of Public and Private Assistance, which was scheduled to take place in Milan, Italy, from May 23 to 27. Nina's health was deteriorating after contracting a serious infection during a trip to Conde, on the northern coast of Bahia. To recover from the infection, he traveled to the city of Alagoinhas, 100 km from the Bahian capital. Days later, he returned to Salvador in better health to receive the university's invitation. However, on the day of departure for Europe, he was pale and weak, despite his recovery. His wife, Maria Amélia Couto Nina Rodrigues, and their daughter, Alice Nina Rodrigues, who was twelve at the time, embarked with him. During the sea voyage, the disease progressed and on the night of disembarkation, upon arriving in Lisbon on May 17, Nina suffered a hemoptysis crisis, which is when a quantity of blood from the airways and lungs passes through the glottis. Upon arriving in Portugal, he received medical attention. A lung X-ray ruled out possible pulmonary tuberculosis, and a newspaper in the Portuguese capital, "Correo da Europa," published in its edition that Nina suffered from liver cancer. Although the newspaper stated this, medical diagnoses also pointed to possible calculous cholecystitis. The solution was surgery, which Nina refused. At the time, Paris was the most advanced health center on the European continent, so the doctor from Maranhão traveled to France on June 19 and was well received by his colleagues. In France, as the disease progressed, he received various diagnoses, such as dilation of the heart and aorta, tuberculosis of the pericardium, areolar abscess of the liver, and tuberculosis of the pleura, pericardium, and diaphragm. Despite the illness, he remained obstinate in his duties. Days after his illness improved, Nina Rodrigues went to visit suppliers of the instruments that would equip the future forensic medical institute that was under construction in the city of Salvador. On July 10, while attending autopsies and gathering information to implement more advanced services in Bahia, Nina suddenly fell ill and fainted. Three days later, in his room at the Nouvel Hotel, he suffered another bout of hemoptysis and told friends around three in the morning that "this is the beginning of the end." Visits to Nina's room were suspended, and only a doctor residing in Paris, whose name is unknown, and his Brazilian colleague, Dr. Eduardo Moraes, were present during his final moments. Before dying, he requested a priest and told his wife to return to Brazil with the family of his friend, Dr. Eduardo de Moraes.
Death
Raimundo Nina Rodrigues died in France at 7:00 a.m. on July 17, 1906. Professor Brouadel, one of the forensic doctors Rodrigues most admired and who held the position of dean of the Paris School of Medicine, was responsible for the autopsy and the return of the body to Brazil. Since transportation between continents was time-consuming, Nina's body had to be embalmed for the long journey. News of his death reached Brazil by telegram and shocked the entire medical profession. As soon as the dean of the Bahia School of Medicine, Dr. Alfredo Tomé de Britto, heard the news, he suspended classes and lowered the national flag to half-mast. The burial took place in Bahia on August 11 of the same year, almost a month after his death. Nina's body was received with great honor in the capital of Bahia and due to its importance, in a request to the Ministry of the Interior, the students of the Faculty of Medicine of Bahia requested that all costs related to the funeral be paid by the federal government, since he had gone abroad representing the country on an official trip, however all expenses were paid by the academic community of Bahia. In the currency of the time, the expenses from the transfer of the body to the burial cost approximately 20,000 contos de réis. Upon arriving at the port of Salvador, the body followed in a funeral procession to the Monastery of São Bento, where it arrived at 6 p.m. At the Benedictine monastery, Nina's wake was held with the help of a rotation of fifteen college classes, each with fifteen students, until the time of the mass, after which they departed for the cemetery. The body was buried in the Campo Santo Cemetery, in the Federação neighborhood, where today stands a white tombstone of the man considered the founder of forensic medicine in Bahia.
Salvador: Tropicalist, Forensic Scientist, and Anthropologist
In Salvador, which had more than two thousand Africans registered at the time of the abolition of slavery (1888), he also dedicated himself to clinical medicine and to serving the underprivileged, mostly Black population, and was then called Doctor of the Poor. citing
In 1889, he took the exam for the Faculty of Medicine of Bahia, becoming an assistant professor of Clinical Medicine, held by Councilor José Luís de Almeida Couto, a longtime republican, abolitionist, and nationally renowned politician.
Below is a paleographic transcription of the handwritten letter from Nina Rodrigues containing information about his appointment and induction as a professor at the Bahia School of Medicine in 1889:
Record of the Letter from Dr. Raymundo Nina Rodrigues
"Considering the merit and qualifications demonstrated by Dr. Raymundo Nina Rodrigues in the competitive examination, I hereby appoint him to the position of assistant to the 2nd chair of clinical medicine at the Bahia School of Medicine, with the salary due to him. Palace of Rio de Janeiro, on September 6, 1889, the sixty-eighth of Independence and the Empire. With the signature of His Majesty the Emperor, Baron of Loreto. Fulfilled and recorded. Palace of the Presidency of Bahia, September 27, 1889, Almda Coreto. No. 2032. 3rd of. Paid thirty thousand reis, Re. and Provincial B. September 27, 1889. The Faithful. A. Guimarães. The clerk. N. Carneiro da Rocha. Registered at fl 216 N of the book of imperial diplomas. Secretariat of the Government of Bahia, September 28, 1889. C. Seabra. Comply and register. Bahia and Faculty of Medicine September 28, 1889. Dr. José Olimpio. Took the oath and took office on September 28, 1889. Dr. T. A. Gaspar."de setembro de 1889. Dr. T. A. Gaspar."
But his object of study and research lay outside the physical confines of the academic institution. Therefore, he refused to give up on the hardships of the population excluded from the center of power, no matter how much criticism he received. "Nina is crazy! He frequents Candomblés, sleeps with the inhaôs [sic], and eats the food of the orixás," was a typical remark from the petty squabbles of his fellow professors, as recounted by his disciple and admirer Estácio de Lima in the book "Old and New Nina."Lima, Estácio de; Velho e Novo Nina. Salvador: Empresa Gráfica da Bahia, 1979. In his manuscripts, he emphasized the role of women in Candomblé circles, especially when discussing Salvador's best-known terreiros, located in the neighborhoods of Gantois, Engenho Velho, and Garcia. According to him, it was necessary to note that all these spaces were led by mothers-of-saints, citing the names of the mothers-of-saints Julia, Isabel, Livaldina, Thecla, the mother of Calçada do Bonfim, among others, reinforcing the idea that the "African Salvador" had many female leaders.
In a time marked by racial intolerance, the professor at the Bahia School of Medicine demonstrated affection for Black culture and a scientific perspective on religions of African origin. He visited terreiros in Salvador and the Bahian Recôncavo region, using them as research sites. According to writer Lilia Schwarcz, Nina sought to make his theses not a personal matter, but a scientific subject, amply expanded upon in the bibliography of the time. He never excluded the ideology of Black inferiority and, after his death, left a legacy as the founder of Brazilian anthropology, but also as the "first ethnographer of urban Brazil," for having left a "detailed and credible ethnography of Afro-Brazilian religion."
After the end of the Canudos War, Antônio Conselheiro's skulls were exhumed in 1897 and sent to the Bahia School of Medicine for study, where it was hoped to find signs of "innate criminality," according to the conception of criminal anthropology at the time. Along with the director of the faculty, Pacífico Pereira, and the psychiatrist Juliano Moreira, Nina Rodrigues' diagnosis did not inspire "any abnormality that demonstrates traces of degeneration".