From Portugal to Brazil: Analysing medical expressions in a diachronic corpus
(2025) 11th International Conference on Pluricentric Languages and their Non-Dominant Varieties — Location: Coimbra, Portugal (22.May.2025)
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- Abstract
- This paper presents the construction process and key findings from the exploration of a digital diachronic corpus composed of medical handbooks printed in Portugal and Brazil during the 18th and 19th centuries. The corpus, which focuses on domestic medicine handbooks, includes a simplified transcription that are compatible with computational tools. This allows us to observe linguistic variations, as well as changes and continuities in medical terminology between European and Brazilian Portuguese. Many of these handbooks employed case report techniques to address diverse diseases and conditions, and to provide guidance on various healing practices. The corpus construction is based on studies in Digital Philology (Paixão de Sousa, 2013), Digital Humanities, Diachronic Terminology, Lexicometry, Historical Sociolinguistics, and Socio-Historical Lexicology (Cambraia, Cunha, Santos, 2023). One of the outcomes of organizing this corpus is a contrastive study of plant-based treatments for diseases, ailments, and symptoms affecting different patient profiles. We examine a medical handbook by Semedo (1707), Observações Médicas e Doutrinais de 100 Casos Gravíssimos, printed in Portugal, which documents 101 medical cases, and the Manual do Fazendeiro ou Tratado Doméstico sobre as Enfermidades dos Negros, by Imbert (1834), which had a first print and an extended reprint in Brazil. The latter was widely used by farmers concerned with prolonging the productive life expectancy of their enslaved labour force. We use the term MALVAÍSCO (or its variant MALVAVAÍSCO), referring to a plant of the species Malvaviscus arboreus from the Malvaceae family, native to tropical regions of the Americas as a guiding example. In Semedo (1707), its use – infused with other plants – was prescribed as part of the treatment for a Portuguese woman who was breastfeeding her child and suffered from severe gastric and nutritional issues, including persistent vomiting and diarrhoea. In Imbert (1834), the same plant is recommended as an adjuvant in treating one stage of dysentery, a disease that afflicted many enslaved individuals – men, women, and children – on farms during the years of imperial Brazil. Specifically, the plant was suggested during the intestinal inflammation phase, in a cold infusion also containing barley, borage, and linseed, sweetened with a syrup made from gum arabic. Findings like these, extracted from the corpus, and then cross-referenced, and arranged chronologically, will contribute to the development of a prospective hyperdictionary of Luso-Brazilian historical epidemiology (Finatto, 2024). This project of a hyperdictionary integrates elements from the historical handbooks under study, data from contemporary medical and pharmacological research on the herbal species mentioned, and insights into different patient profiles. The comparison between the Portuguese source – widely circulated and used by healing practitioners in colonial Brazil – and the Brazilian source, specifically designed to address the healthcare needs of an entire population of enslaved individuals, reflects, through language, the knowledge, expertise, practices, and ideologies of each context and phases of the reported assistance. Lexicometric tools, combined with qualitative corpus analyses, reveal that the terminology and the descriptions of these medical procedures not only disseminated therapeutic practices but also reflected societal perceptions of different groups of patients. This underscores the potential of Digital Humanities for preserving and linguistically analysing bibliographic sources of historical significance. While digital corpora and simplified transcriptions do not replace traditional practices in Philology and Textual Criticism or the direct engagement of researchers with collections, they can expand access to documentary sources and encourage new approaches and interests in interdisciplinary research. Finally, we emphasise the potential of diachronic medical corpora to bring together Lexicology, Computational Linguistics, Cultural studies, and the History of Health Sciences in the context of the Portuguese language.
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Finatto, M. J. B., Zilio, L., & Silva, G. S. d. (2025). From Portugal to Brazil: Analysing medical expressions in a diachronic corpus. 11th International Conference on Pluricentric Languages and their Non-Dominant Varieties, Coimbra, Portugal. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/276995