Previous Contribution

Among the innumerous contributions of the Section/Division of Anatomical Pathology to national science, we can mention:

• - Rocha-Lima's and Magarinos Torres' fundamental studies on yellow fever anatomical pathology. Rocha-Lima's lesion always seen in advanced cases of the disease, and oxychromatic degeneration of hepatic cell nucleus; Magarinos Torres' lesion, with nuclear inclusions which were characteristic in the first stage of infection, how these represented the mark of the disease and the traces it left in the body;

• - Histological lesions of Chagas Disease were firstly and greatly described by Gaspar Vianna, and illustrated by Castro-Silva after long studies had been conducted by Magarinos Torres and Henrique da Rocha-Lima. Torres has classical papers on heart disease caused by Chagas Disease that on the clinical point of view was very well studied by Carlos Chagas himself and Eurico Villela, later by Evandro Chagas, and after that by Genard Nobrega, Francisco da Silva Laranja and other doctors from Manguinhos;

• - Gaspar Vianna generally explained for the first time the clinical and anatomical-pathological condition of Lutz's mycosis, clarifying its pathogenesis and showing that, after initially located on the skin and mucosa, the infection spread through the lymphatic route before spreading to the whole body, in a final hematogenic phase. Part of this study was published in cooperation with Miguel Pereira, and was used for his thesis for the purposes of obtaining a full professor qualification, and presented to Faculdade de Medicina do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro Medicine School). Splendore's studies were then completed, which gave a hint on the existence of multiple infection sites due to the existence of clinical signs indicating infection in the lung, and presence of parasitic forms in patients' spittle and urine;

• - Penna-de-Azevedo reviewed existing material from the thyroid gland of individuals with clinically and parsithologically proven diagnosis of Chagas Disease. An important fact is that part of Penna-de-Azevedo works concerning thyroid lesions in acute cases of Chagas Disease was published when Chagas was still alive;

• - Magarinos Torres' and José Castro-Teixeira's works on smallpox and alastrim histopathology brought new and important subsidies for distinguishing these two diseases by clinical manifestations and lesions produced in the chorioallantoic membrane of chicken embryos, which was also demonstrated by Antonio Sotero Cabral in Manguinhos;

• - Studies on chromoblastomycosis histopathology undertaken by Manguinhos Torres and benign blastomycosis (wolf disease or mycosis) undertaken by Penna-de-Azevedo;

• - Among Manguinhos works on neuropathology, we must highlight those undertaken by Alexandre Alencar on subacute sclerosing panencephalitis. In first place, because these works were the first works/studies conducted in Brazil about what was then considered to be "atypical encephalitis" (forms of Dawson, Van Bogaert and Pette-Doring). Alencar described nuclear and nucleolar changes found, and the "nucleoline extrusion" phenomenon was first seen in these diseases. Alencar's works have also proved this phenomenon does not occur only in sclerosing subacute panencephalitis, but also in acute previous poliomyelitis and rabies, a general phenomenon seen in neurovirosis.