[Epidemics in the news in Portugal: cholera, plague, typhus, influenza and smallpox, 1854-1918]. / As epidemias nas notícias em Portugal: cólera, peste, tifo, gripe e varíola, 1854-1918.

In severe health crisis like those of 1854-1856, 1899 and 1918, especially in Porto, where cholera morbus, the bubonic plague, typhus fever, pneumonic influenza and smallpox killed high percentages of the population, the images of the epidemics in the press enable us to identify the scientific knowledge in a country considered peripheral, but which had studies and personnel specialized at the most advanced levels for the time. A database of 6,700 news items and announcements reveals the medical and pharmaceutical knowledge of the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the way it was transmitted and disclosed to the public and the solutions offered by the health authorities. Hygiene was consistently highlighted in the news and announcements.

Epidemics in the news: Health and hygiene in the press in periods of crisis.

How did scientific knowledge reach the public? Using the press and keeping in mind the population's limited access to written material, this paper establishes how the latest scientific news was divulged to unspecialised audiences. In times of sanitary crisis in Oporto, such as the cholera morbus epidemic of 1854-1856, the bubonic plague in 1899 and the 1918 influenza pandemic, newspapers were important sources to access the information and advice given to the public. A database of 6700 articles, medical reports and advertisements published in daily newspapers reveals the state of the art of medical science. It also reveals the importance given by health authorities and journalists to the publication of recent discoveries and adequate hygiene procedures to prevent the spread of the epidemics. This is a subject that contributes to the debates on the dissemination of science and on the place that Portugal occupied in the international scientific community.

Fighting disease and epidemics: Ricardo Jorge and the internationalization of Portuguese science.

Ricardo Jorge was one of the principal doctors responsible for the sanitary transition in Portugal. He created and enforced the most important policies for disease control, both endemic and epidemic, which scourged the western world between the mid nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. His professional training and academic and scientific performances reveal Ricardo Jorge's value in Portuguese science and his efforts for its internationalization. His capacities were confirmed by the emergency of the sanitary situations with which he was confronted and by the authorities' confidence in him, by putting him in charge of the bubonic plague elimination process.

The Portuguese Cholera morbus epidemic of 1853-56 as seen by the press.

This is a study of how scientific knowledge reached common citizens in nineteenth-century Portugal, using newspapers as the main source. Despite the population's limited access to written material, each leading newspaper might be read by 30 000 people a day in Lisbon. This made newspapers the most widely available vehicle for the diffusion of the latest scientific information to the general public. With a cholera morbus epidemic affecting the second largest Portuguese town and all the northern regions, as well as the Algarve, reports on the course of the epidemic were considered essential. The author bases her study on a database of news about the disease in 1855 and 1856, especially with regard to prevention and treatment.