Manuel José Leitão and the Beginning of the Neurosurgery in Portugal: Diagnosis and Treatment of Vertebral Fractures

Abstract

Several Portuguese surgeons of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries wrote and published treatises of relevance to the time on anatomy and surgery. An example of a surgeon that strived for theoretical and practical progress in these areas is that of Manuel José Leitão, Surgeon of the Royal House, Examiner of the Board of “Protomedicato”, Major Surgeon of the Cavalry Regiment of Chaves and Professor of Anatomy and Surgery of the Military Hospital of the same city, at the end of the eighteenth century.