Contributions to the History of Medicine in Portugal: Luís de Pina and Representations of Social Hygiene

Abstract

 In the History of Medicine in Portugal during the first half of the 20th century, medical practices of social hygiene resulted from the study of personality. Constitutional trends have been established for criminals based on science that, by different methods, explained the genesis of crime. However, the use of science poses a problem: the study of criminal personality is not so simple and constant, nor does it inspire such confident certainties in the results. Despite this uncertain character, some credibility is deposited in the psychoscopies (a kind of auscultation of the psychic field) and psychometrics (measurement of psychic phenomena) of criminals, with the aim of establishing prognoses of conduct. Regardless of the use of the most categorized and suitable tests or proofs in the identification and social classification of criminals, these possibilities are sometimes modest and limited, because deficiencies and prognostic / diagnostic failures occur. The paradigmatic case-study is the physician Luís de Pina (1901-1972), who drew attention to the fact that, in Medicine, Social and Criminal Anthropology, Psychology, Law, Criminal Biology or Criminology, criminals are the subject of expert concerns and scientific, while science serve hygienist interests in social organization.