Manuel de Abreu facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Manuel de Abreu
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Manuel de Abreu in 1942
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| Born | January 4, 1892 |
| Died | January 30, 1962 (aged 71) |
| Nationality | Brazilian |
| Known for | abreugraphy |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | medicine |
Manuel Dias de Abreu (born January 4, 1892 – died January 30, 1962) was a Brazilian physician and scientist. He is famous for inventing abreugraphy. This was a quick X-ray method to check people's lungs for tuberculosis. He is seen as one of Brazil's most important doctors.
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Manuel de Abreu's Early Life and Work
Manuel de Abreu was born in São Paulo, Brazil. He finished his medical studies in 1914 at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Soon after, he moved to France. In 1915, he worked with Dr. Louis Gaston at a hospital called Nouvel Hôpital de la Pitié. His job was to take pictures of body parts for surgery. He quickly found better ways to do this.
In 1916, Abreu started working at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. Here, he first learned about medical radiography (X-rays). X-rays had only been discovered 20 years earlier. He became the director of the hospital's X-ray lab.
His boss, Dr. Jean Guilleminot, suggested he look into fluorography. This is a way to take photos of X-ray images of the lungs. Abreu soon realized how useful these images could be. They helped find tuberculosis and other lung problems early. He began his studies on lung photography in 1918. This was at the Hôpital Laennec in France.
New X-ray Methods for Diagnosis
Abreu made a big step forward in X-raying soft body parts. Before him, these images were not very clear. He created a method to measure how dense tissues were using X-rays. He compared them to water and bones. This helped doctors diagnose problems better.
In 1921, he published his first important work. It was about how to read X-ray images of lung injuries from tuberculosis. This work, and his density method, led to an invitation. He was asked to join the famous Académie de Médicine de Paris.
In 1922, Abreu came back to Brazil. He became the head of the X-Ray Department. This was for the public health service fighting tuberculosis in Rio de Janeiro. At that time, the city was facing a serious tuberculosis epidemic. He worked hard on chest X-rays to find lung problems early. But at first, the X-ray images were not good enough.
Developing Abreugraphy for Mass Screening
Over time, X-ray and photography tools got much better. In 1935, Abreu tried his experiments again. He was at the old German Hospital in Rio de Janeiro. He then came up with a cheap and fast way to take small X-ray pictures (50 or 100 mm). These were taken on a single roll of film.
This method became a key tool for diagnosing tuberculosis for many years. It greatly helped in preventing and treating the disease.
The First Abreugraphy Machine
Abreu's idea for a new mass X-ray machine became real. The Lohner House, a company representing Siemens AG in Rio, built the first device. The first Thoracic Census service started in 1937.
The first results showed how useful abreugraphy was. In July 1937, 758 people who seemed healthy were checked. The screening found that 44 of them already had tuberculosis in their lungs. This allowed them to get early treatment and have a better chance of survival.
Mobile X-ray units were also used. Soon, abreugraphy became a required check-up. Anyone applying for a public job or school in Brazil had to get one. By the late 1940s, Dr. Manuel de Abreu could show the first positive impact. Mass screening was helping to lower deaths from tuberculosis.
What is Abreugraphy?
The invention was named abreugrafia in his honor. This happened in 1936 by the Society of Medicine and Surgery of Rio de Janeiro. Abreugraphy was largely stopped as a required screening tool in Brazil in the 1970s. This was because antibiotic treatments and public health programs greatly reduced tuberculosis cases. Also, there was concern about too much X-ray exposure, especially for children and pregnant women.
The World Health Organization suggested stopping its use. The Brazilian health service stopped paying for it in 1999.
Abreugraphy was not used as much in other countries as it was in Brazil. It was also popular in a few other Latin American countries. It had different names depending on the country. Some names were mass radiography (UK, US), roentgenfluorography (Germany), and radiophotography (France). The importance of abreugraphy was highlighted by the creation of the Brazilian Society of Abreugraphy in 1957. They also published the Revista Brasileira de Abreugrafia (Brazilian Journal of Abreugraphy).
Manuel de Abreu's Other Achievements
Abreu was also one of the first X-ray doctors to create ways to measure the size of internal body parts. He used this in medical diagnosis. He applied this to measure images of the mediastinum (the space in the chest between the lungs). He called this method radiogeometry. His ideas were put together in his 1928 book, "Essai sur une nouvelle Radiologie Vasculaire".
Abreu also helped develop new X-ray techniques. These included tomography (taking X-rays of a specific layer of the body) of the chest. He used several films at once. He also used a method called tracheobronchic washout. This helped find Koch bacilli (the bacteria causing tuberculosis) in infected people.
Manuel Dias de Abreu gave many talks on medical radiology. He spoke at many scientific groups in Brazil and other countries. He was a member of important medical groups worldwide. He received the French Légion d'Honneur (Legion of Honor). He also won several other science awards. These included the Gold Medal from the American College of Chest Physicians in 1950. He also got the Gold Medal from the Argentinian Radiological Society in 1953.
Besides many medical books, Abreu also published two poetry books. One was Substâncias, with drawings by the famous Brazilian painter Emiliano Di Cavalcanti. The other was Poemas sem Realidade, which he illustrated himself.
Dr. Abreu died in Rio de Janeiro in 1962 from lung cancer.
Quotation
The value of life is within the value of science, outside life, science has no finality
