Mr. Jorge Rainho Costa has worked in the Laboratory of the former Hospital Colónia Rovisco Pais (HCRP) since 1968 and told how this service worked. He confided that: “I was the last one to leave, and whoever closed the door!” And so, since his retirement, in 2000, that closed laboratory perpetuated, in those who visited him, the feeling that time had just been suspended and that at any time that space could come to life and work again.

The year 2020 marked the end of that hope or hope by running the clock. The old hospital building that “fulfilled its mission” started a new care journey. The works, now underway, will transform the spaces where memories of a long time ago were just around another epidemic and the motto of its existence – Hansen’s disease.

Mr. Rainho, did not return to the hospital in time to see the laboratory one last time. The Covid 19 pandemic delayed the meeting. When he returned to the hospital, I saw him being renovated. Accessing our invitation, he came to share his memories. He found spaces and people that touched him and enriched the intangible heritage that will be intrinsic to them.

From the laboratory he reviewed the stuffing – a unique collection in the country consisting of equipment, files and samples that will give shape to one of the nuclei of the museum exhibition in the future. In the middle of this reunion, the analyst was recognizing and helping to identify pieces. There were many questions, and Mr. Rainho, in the midst of his enthusiasm, was unraveling essential memories to complete the puzzle of this story – his and his professional world.

He told us that he is the son of farmers and worked on his parents’ lands, but at some point he found, in the newspaper “Voz da Figueira”, a recruitment advertisement for cleanings at Figueira da Foz Hospital, and decided to change the direction of his life, competed. He didn’t like the job very much, so he tried to apply for the nursing course, given at the Hospitals of the University of Coimbra (HUC), but ended up taking the technical course in clinical analysis at HUC and went on to intern for six months at HCRP, where they even paid him as an eventual. He was close to home and as they liked their work he had “the hope of staying”.

But “the contest at the Tocha took a long time and that’s why I ran for the Curry Cabral Hospital in Lisbon. This hospital was specialized in infectious diseases and was where the first patients admitted to the HCRP came from. I was selected and although I tried to give up the place, I ended up being called and had to perform in Lisbon. There were few competitors for the places and the resuscitation service was going to open, which would have its own laboratory … ”When, almost two years later, he opened the contest at the Tocha, Mr. Rainho ran, with experience, and ended up stay. The head of the laboratory was Dr. Seabra Santos and later, Dr. Fausta Gaspar Nogueira succeeded him, who assumed the leadership of the laboratory until he retired.

Initially “we were four and I worked more with the microscope, but then we were reducing it until the laboratory stopped working. When Dr. Fausta retired, in the 90s, the service was not so much, as luckily the leprosy had reduced, the hospital and the pavilions were becoming empty, and so there was no justification to hire a new superior technician. The harvests continued to be made at the hospital, but the analyzes were carried out at the Faculty of Medicine in Coimbra and I accompanied them in transport. I only had a blood test or blood glucose if it was an emergency, ”said Mr. Rainho.

But when the Colónia Rovisco Pais Hospital was in full operation “it was the only leprosy hospital in the country and the second in Europe. It was the only laboratory that diagnosed leprosy. And, leprosy screening tests were performed every day. We received requests for analyzes from all over the country, samples from other hospitals and doctors, to confirm suspicions. If the result was positive, the patient would be followed by the HCRP ”. At the same time, “they collected samples from the laboratory that were collected during the brigades that traveled the country, by zones, once or twice a year”.

Mr. Rainho joined these brigades and confessed that he was the external service he most liked. “It was an intense day, the service was very tiring, we were out for several days, and we slept in pensions but I remember the atmosphere of camaraderie between colleagues and how I got to know the country from corner to corner. In this service, I felt that there was a mission and we were very satisfied when we identified a new case! ”

In the brigades “there was a script and we had the patients scheduled. We went through the hamlets, where there were more sick, many miserable. We went to visit the sick because they had no transport, some had no means, others lived in poor villages where we had to go on foot. My role was to help make the patient process with the history, analyzes and identification of the type of leprosy … In these brigades we accompanied the patient, who had to do analyzes once a year, as well as those who were communicating or family members and performed tests that determined their resistance to the disease – Lepromine”.

Trying to understand how everything was going on, Mr. Rainho explained to us how they did the collection for the analysis that would allow the diagnosis of leprosy to be confirmed, which consisted of the analysis of mucus and skin: “When collecting nasal mucus, the patient was asked to if he blew, and after the nasal cavities were cleaned, we would swab to the septum of the nose, gently rotating and subsequently making a 2 or 3mm smear in the center of a slide. Later, this slide followed the staining rights, being seen under a microscope. 

When collecting the skin, we observed the patient in order to identify a spot, lepromas or lumps where the patient normally did not have the sensitivity to do a small biopsy there. We anesthetized a little, and with a proper instrument a little tissue was collected and then put in formalin. Before entering formaldehyde, a direct examination was performed. Then, for confirmation, a deeper biopsy was performed, in which the staining was the same. These slides were studied because if the initial result was negative, the staining would be repeated, to see if it spread some time later”.