Nurse Nídia Salgueiro graduated from the School of Nursing Dr. Ângelo da Fonseca in Coimbra. She performed her professional activity at the Hospitals of the University of Coimbra, where she was responsible for several services, including the Dermatology and Venerology Service of and of Medical Clinic and at the Dr. Ângelo da Fonseca School of Nursing (EEAF), where she was a monitor, teacher, coordinator of courses and member of the Installation and Management Commission (1977-1983). 

Her vast and diversified professional experience was one of the important aspects for collect this testimony, because in addition to facilitating the framing of assistance in this area in the central region, it allowed to verify impact of the external image of the old Colónia Rovisco Pais Hospital (HCRP), built through visits by study carried out by portuguese and french nurses.

Nurse Nídia visited the Hospital, at least in three different moments of its operation. The first time, in 1955, when I was a finalist student in the General Nursing Course at the EEAF. The second time, in 1972, with the students of the General Nursing Course, as a teacher at that School. The third, in the 1990s when she accompanied students and teachers from french nursing schools (Écoles Cadres).

On the 1955 visit, the HCRP was at the peak of its operation. The systematic identification and social isolation of contagious Hansen patients was one of the measures provided for in Portuguese legislation. The fight against leprosy was based on early diagnosis, as a way to control injuries and the evolution of the disease, and on the prevention of contagion as a way to preserve public health. On this visit to the HCRP, Nídia, co-course and the instructors of Dr. Ângelo da Fonseca Nursing were accompanied by officials of the Hospital who were transmitting information about the activities and the operation of each sector.  They started in the area reserved for the sick, going through all the buildings, but they were not allowed to enter the Preventory and Nursery because they had previously been in the hospital area, but their operation was explained to them.

From that visit, Nurse Nídia remembers explaining, given the existence of the prison and when passing in front of this “(…) that there were rules, and that control was tight. Patients could not leave if they were in the contagious phase. It was mainly men who ran away … and not women, to see their children”.

Nurse Nídia still preserves images of the patients in her memory – “with deformities in the face and hands, with ulcers in the legs and mobility difficulties” and injuries in several other areas of the body.

It is recalled that “the sensation of community was noticeable” and “(…) the houses of the sick marked me, and the coexistence of male and female patients, that is, couples of patients. That, for you, was a very interesting aspect … and, she adds, in some countries they would possibly be sterilized … I enjoyed seeing a family, seeing the patients cultivating … The little garden in each house impressed me a lot. It was something that I retained and that lasted. I have never been in favor of gender separation in hospitals, at the Nursing School, in the homes of the School. Perhaps, this feeling was due to the fact that, in a time when primary and secondary education took place in establishments separated by sex, the 4th grade was done with the Teacher and the boys. With the birth of the first child and some health problems, the students (two) spent at the beginning of the school year for the husband, also teacher, I think to relieve the wife, and, without an official character. For me, it was a great experience. The teacher was very demanding, stimulating the creativity of his students and creating a taste for gardening. Also decisive was the fact that I always dealt with boys, due to my parents company and to the contacts with the agricultural workers, who always respected me a lot. Hence, when I started teaching (1-1-1968), taking the coordination of the course, I fought for mixed activities. Students, in their commemorations of course, always invite me and emphasize this fact. Also proposing mixed classes at school and swimming, which was granted. As a member of the Installing Committee of the Nursing School, I fought for the transformation of the Home-Headquarters into a Mixed Home. It was a difficult process, which required a lot of diplomacy and an appeal to the boys’ “sensitive rope” to overcome their resistance. When the Nursing Home Alexandre Herculano became vacant, after the extinction of the Nursing Assistant Course, they took it by storm and did not give up on it. This mixed home experience was very important for the success of Mixed Residence in the new facilities of the Dr. Ângelo da Fonseca School of Nursing.

At HCRP, “those little houses had flower pots, as well as in the exterior spaces of the buildings, creating beauty and a pleasant and healthy environment… I was raised in the middle of nature, like a gazelle running free… I was enchanted.”

In the hospital building, she remembers the patients coming to the entrance to undergo treatments, as well as the wards.

These memories transported her to another moment, when she started her professional activity in the Dermatology service of the Hospitals of the University of Coimbra (26-04-1956). In which “(…) a lady came to the Dermatology consultation, whose lesions led her to suspect leprosy, having been referred to the HCRP”. She recalled that “(…) the treatments that existed at that time, with sulfonotherapy, had many side effects, causing many allergies. There was nothing, nor effective therapy … I don’t know what was better if it was the diseases, if it was those effects… Fortunately, then penicillin came… And everything evolved”.

Penicillin began to be introduced gradually in some countries from 1942, although initially it was very expensive and difficult to acquire. 

Nurse Nídia recalls that “in the Medical Clinic service, at the end of the 1950s there was still difficulty in obtaining and carrying out treatment with penicillin, the then intramuscular injection known as Penadur 633, which they were going to fetch from the old Coimbra.”

The therapeutic solution for leprosy only appeared in 1977 with the introduction of Rifampicin, being effective later combined with Dapsone and Clofazimine. But it was only in 1981 that this combined treatment for multidrug therapy was recommended by WHO and included in control programs for the so-called Hansen’s disease.

In the context of “social hygiene” that Professor Bissaya Barreto was conductor and “hospital administration and organization”, of its Complementary Nursing Course, Teaching and Administration sections (CEC-1956/1957), the first visit to HCRP, whose memory lasted, was resumed in the light of the new knowledge, allowed Nurse Nídia to reinforce the “very positive impression of that hospital unit”. And that is why she said: “The HCRP was a model, with a pavilion design, with well-structured separations. It was based on a concept of a self-sustainable institution. The patients who could afford it resided in a house “their”. The most severely ill patients were admitted to the hospital wards or nursing homes in order to receive care appropriate to their condition.”

And she went on to say: that institution“(…) functioned in a network, very organized, fitting in with the prototype and conception of Professor Bissaya Barreto’s work: modeling in terms of structure and equipment, surrounded by nature, with beautiful gardens, with a means of dissemination and teaching – Revista Rovisco Pais… Because without knowledge there is no progress, just as he conceived for tuberculosis (1932-1942). ”

In 1972, when Nurse Nídia returned to the HCRP with her students, there were no longer many hospitalized patients, but it is recalled that there was a service of “Nursing at home and after hospitalization, in which nurses traveled the region on a scooter, taking the medicine to patients followed on an outpatient basis and watching their intake.”

Nurse Nídia went on to confide: “I must say that in these visits I was not aware of the breadth of this work, whose brigades (with nurses and social workers) were going from Minho to the Algarve, overcoming illness and the social and survival needs.”

Later, already in the 1990s, Nurse Nídia accompanied groups of nurses from the Escola de Quadros (France), under cooperation protocols with the EEAF. The program included visits to the Mira Health Center or the Figueira da Foz Hospital, passing by the Rovisco Pais Hospital, in Tocha. It is recalled that on one of these visits, they verified the existence of Hansen’s former patients on the premises of the former HCRP, whose stay was justified by those who guided the visit and, according to the retained, thus: “(…) the patients sacrificed themselves, fulfilling the social isolation, leaving their communities, their families and homes, in favor of the whole, that is, of society. This fact justifies a “debt of gratitude” towards them, and that the State guarantees the continuity of the support they need, after the cure, in cases in which family ties and age, and /or their weakness, have been lost, or the preference of staying there, as they consider it to be their home.” 

These visitors, in the evaluation of the visit, shared with Nurse Nídia their “admiration for the organization of that hospital unit, considering it to be a model”. As she explained: “although they were going to see a reality that was no longer the initial one, but it was still possible to understand the original concept and see the houses with some ex-patients. It was quite noticeable that ex-patients considered those houses as their own, assuming that this was their world.”