CONTRIBUTION TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN CUTANEOUS LEISHMANIASIS IN BRAZIL, POSSIBLE CASES IN SLAVES AT VILA DE VASSOURAS, RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL, BETWEEN 1820 AND 1880

Abstract

In Brazil, American cutaneous leishmaniasis (ACL) was only confirmed in 1909 by Lindemberg, who found parasites in cutaneous lesions of people working in the countryside of São Paulo state that resembled Leishmania tropica, a variety that affects the Old World. Gaspar Vianna, considered it as a different parasite to L. tropica and christened it Leishmania braziliensis, thus determining the etiological agent of ACL. Despite its importance on the world, there are still questions about its origin and spread. This paper aims to demonstrate the possibility of the existence of ACL in the town of Vassouras RJ- in the early XIX century, a period prior to that considered as the arrival of the disease in southeastern Brazil. The work was performed by analysis of postmortem inventories held at the Historical Documentation Center in this city.