A peste que veio do mar: zonas litorais, doenças e curas (séculos XVI/XXI)

In the mid-15th century, with the increase in European sea travel, contacts between Europe and the rest of the world became regular. Ships became primarily responsible for intercontinental connections as well as for the circulation and transport of people and animals, raw materials and goods, knowledge and technology, diseases, pathogens, and healing practices.
Long-distance travel shortened distances, brought people and places closer together, and made ports and port cities privileged spaces of contact, exchange, and miscegenation. In Europe, the location and the hybrid nature of these spaces made them prone to entry and spread of new diseases, requiring local governments to create and implement prophylactic and health control measures.

In the 18th century, reflecting an increasing globalisation process, these concerns went far beyond the European universe. Colonial territories have become spaces for experimentation with control and prevention measures. These procedures have been consolidated, participating in a process of construction of medical knowledge and practices that benefited both from the development of European medical and pharmaceutical science, as well as from the incorporation of non-European knowledge and practices, made possible by contacts between geographically and culturally different peoples. In the Portuguese Empire, the coastal areas emerged as privileged spaces for observation and study of the building of this process. In there, it was possible to regard identification and knowledge of diseases and local healing practices, resulting from the interaction with the native populations, or regarding the imposition of biomedical practices related to the European pharmacopoeia. The peculiar situation of these sea-land interface areas allowed a better insight into how the interaction between different knowledge and practices was stimulated in the different geographies of the Empire, leading to the definition of specific procedures to prevent and/or control the spread of diseases, especially in the case of epidemics. Thus, the sea also becomes a vehicle for the circulation of agents (human and non-human) that, in certain situations, were central, as in the case of the eradication program, enabling thinking about the various aspects of human/non-human interaction in the social construction of diseases. If recognising a disease can be a quick process, finding causes and antidotes can be time-consuming and costly, in a space-time marked by advances, setbacks and disparate realities that even compromise the effectiveness of the solutions found, as evidenced by efforts and measures to contain the current COVID-19 pandemic. 

From this perspective, the true history of diseases in their relationship with coastal areas also calls for a discussion about the “health” of seas, rivers, and oceans that have not only determined and nurtured their existence, but have also contributed to generate new landscapes, and new relationships between human and non-human communities within them, and to demonstrate the link between marine and coastal ecosystems and human populations health.