A Showcase for the Doctors of the Sertão: the Revista Goiana de Medicina and Chagas Disease in Goiás (1955-1962)

ABSTRACT As the official journal of the Goiás Medical Association, the Revista Goiana de Medicina transcended its original frontiers and became a vehicle for disseminating medical research by doctors from Central Brazil, giving them a high level of visibility. The editorial emphasis on Chagas disease, a serious rural endemic that threatened the interior of the country in the mid-twentieth century, is identified as a determining factor in the prominence achieved by them. Setting out from an analysis of articles and institutional correspondence, and taking the journal in question as both the source and object of research, the article reflects simultaneously on the importance of the Goiás medical journal for the institutionalization of local medicine and its relevance among scholars of American trypanosomiasis.