Prof. Paulo Mangabeira Albernaz

Some Notes About My Father

My father was born in Bagé, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, grew up in Salvador, in the state of Bahia, and lived most of his life in Campinas, in the state of São Paulo. His parents were from Bahia. The reason he was born in Bagé is that his father was an army physician and was sent to many different places; my grandfather and my grandmother moved back to Salvador when my father was two years old.


I never met my paternal grandfather. He died of a congenital heart disease when he was 39 years old. My father told me that one day he brought home a pulse plethysmograph, a spring operated device that recorded pulse. My father was in the third year of medical school but had never seen this instrument and was curious about it. So my grandfather took a piece of paper, blackened it with the smoke of a candle and attached it to the plethysmograph. Then he placed his finger on the instrument and set it in motion. The recording needle added a white tracing to the blackened paper and in 20 seconds the recording was completed. My grandfather noticed that there was an abnormal notch in the pulse trace. "This means that I have a heart disease," he told my father. He died six months later. This had a severe mark on my father; for many years he feared that he would not live long enough to be able to watch his sons grow and help them to plan their lives.
The family was poor and my grandmother had a lot a difficulty in putting all of his children through the university. But she did a very good job.
One of his coleagues in medical school became a close friend and he often invited my father to have dinner at his house. There my father met one of his sisters and fell in love. When my father graduated from the medical school in 1919 they became engaged. I do not know when he decided to become an otolaryngologist, but at that time he was already working with Prof. Eduardo de Moraes, a man who had learned the specialty in Vienna and had many disciples.

He loved opera and his idol was Enrico Caruso. He was still a medical student when he happened to be in Rio de Janeiro on a week that Caruso was singing. He could not afford to buy a ticket, so he enlisted himself as an extra, one of these people that go on stage playing a nonspeaking part.
In those days it was very difficult – it still is, isn't it? – to get started in Medicine without a job. And my father could not get one. He had two uncles – João Mangabeira and Octavio Mangabeira – who were politicians opposed to the Governor of the state of Bahia. My maternal grandfather was a prestigious judge and a personal friend of the Governor. He asked the Governor, “Please find a job for my son-in-law.” Said the Governor: "It’s impossible, I cannot give a job to a man with the name Mangabeira."


In 1922, unable to make a living, my father decided to leave Salvador. A friend of the family had been to Jaú, a small city in the state of São Paulo where there were rich farmers planting coffee. So there he went. He rented a house, set his office on the ground level and his living quarters upstairs.
It seems that there were many unmarried young ladies in Jaú at that time, and their mothers tried very hard to make my father marry one of them. "I am engaged," my father would tell them. "That is no problem," they would tell him. "Marriages can be broken even at the church's door."


But my father resisted well. In January 1923 he felt that he was earning enough to support a family and went to Salvador to get married and bring his bride to Jaú. My two older brothers were born there.


Jaú did not have a medical society, so every two or three months my father would take a train to Campinas to present papers or clinical cases. In 1926 he was invited to move to Campinas, where he stayed till the end of his life. I was his only son that was born in Campinas.


He published papers, books about Medicine, books about history - one about Napoleon's death was published in 1938. His book on Otolaryngology was frequently revised, there were ten editions. He always advocated a precise medical language, published many papers about medical terms and was a prominent member of the group of anatomists that created the Brazilian Anatomical Nomenclature, a translation of the international Nomina Anatomica, written in Latin.


In 1933 he was invited to join the group of physicians that founded the Escola Paulista de Medicina. He was the only one in the group that did not live in the city of São Paulo.


Twice a week he would take a train from Campinas to São Paulo; the trip lasted about two hours. One of his assistants picked him up at the station and drove him to he Medical School. He gave a one hour lecture and stayed one hour in the clinics discussing cases. Then it was time to catch the train back to Campinas. He had lunch in the train. At he station he got into his car  and drove to his office, which was nearby.


I still remember the day that my parents went to Montevideo, in 1939, to attend a medical meeting. Travel in those days was complicated. They left to Santos by train and then took a ship to Montevideo. I remember that they had lots of suitcases, my mother had a special round suitcase just for hats!
His presentation was about Professor Ermiro de Lima’s transmaxillary operation for sinusitis. Ermiro was also a disciple of Eduardo de Moraes and they were good friends. This operation had involved a lot of research in monkeys and became a standard procedure in otolaryngology until the advent of the endoscopic techniques. But it was my father who “popularized” the technique. His presentation was a success and he was invited to make a surgical demonstration. Then he was invited to go to Buenos Aires to make another surgical demonstration. All of these things I learned later, for I was seven years old at that time and only remembered the big event that was the preparation for the trip. And I also remember the present that they brought me, a car that I was unable to disassemble (I did this to all of my toys).


He taught until 1966, when he retired from the Medical School, receiving from President Castelo Branco the Order of Medical Merit medal.


The city of Campinas gave him the title of Honorary Citizen. There are a school and a Medical Center that bear his name.


I often meet physicians that were his students in the Medical School. It is surprising to see the admiration that they had for my father and how much they liked him. The same can be said about the otolaryngologists that joined him in medical meetings; during his whole life he never missed a Brazilian Congress of Otolaryngology.


He played a number of roles in my life: father, older brother, teacher of Medicine and also a teacher of ideas, always stimulating my curiosity about a million things.