The controversy on the early history of Chagas disease.

ABSTRACT

Recently historians of medicine have proposed three distinctive accounts of early history of Chagas disease (American trypasonomiasis). According to the first the disease, described by the Brazilian researcher Carlos Chagas in 1909, was "deconstructed" in the 1920s and disappeared for about twenty years, then was recovered in the 1940s, mainly through the epidemiological studies of Emmanuel Dias and his colleagues in Minas Gerais (Brazil). According to the second Chagas disease could not be "deconstructed" in the 1920s because it did not exist at that time. Chagas observations were inaccurate and unreliable and did not define a new human pathology. The entity called today "Chagas disease" appeared in the 1930, principally as the result of investigations of Cecilio Romaña in Argentina. Finally, a third view assumes that "Chagas disease" was constructed gradually between 1909 and the 1950s through the collective efforts of numerous Latino-American researchers. This paper juxtaposes different histories of Chagas disease, and argues that their divergences stems from allegiance to distinct, partly incommensurable epistemological "thought styles". The co-existence of divergent styles of historical investigation, this text proposes, should be perceived as potential source of enrichment of our understanding of the past.