The Beginning of the Use of Radiation in the Minas Gerais Medicine

Abstract

The present article describes private and public actions for the development of an infrastructure adequate for implementing radiotherapy as a medical practice in the capital of Minas Gerais. The Institute of Radium was created in Belo Horizonte, a city that intended to be a modernizing center of the state. The radiotherapy and the radioactive elements were still new for the medical practice, so, during the decade of 1920, they were broadly used for the cure of a wide assortment of diseases: from dermatites to several cancer types. To illustrate the early times of the radiation application in the medicine, the following sources were used: newspapers, medical journals and autobiography books. The article also shows the role of the pharmaceutical industry in the popularization of radioactive drugs, the drugs that had intended to cure the evil cancer, the impact of the death of the radiologist doctors, the population statistics of the main death causes in the state of Minas Gerais, the challenge of the application of radiotherapy in the cases of cancer diagnosis and the efforts for improving the medical knowledge in the area of oncology, efforts that promoted the visit of Mme. Curie to the Minas Gerais capital and of the donation by her of a radioactive needle to the Institute of Radium.