Costa Ferreira (Dr António Aurélio da)

He was born in Funchal on 18 January 1879, the son of Francisco Joaquim da Costa Ferreira and Dona Teodolinda Augusta de Freitas da Costa Ferreira. He holds a licentiate in philosophy and is a bachelor (bacharel, university graduate) in medicine of the University of Coimbra (Universidade de Coimbra). He has been assistant in anatomy at the Lisbon Medical School (Escola Médica de Lisboa), supernumerary professor at one of the secondary schools (liceus) of the same city, director of the Casa Pia, and professor of general pedagogy and the history of education at the Teacher Training School (Escola Normal). He is a member of the Anthropological Society of Paris, the Portuguese Society of Natural Sciences, the Lisbon Geographical Society (Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa), the Academy of Sciences of Portugal, the Institute of Coimbra, etc. He belongs to the Evolutionist Party and was minister of finance in the government headed by Duarte Leite. From a very early age he has devoted himself to anthropological studies, and he is today the Portuguese who best knows the branch of the natural sciences that deals with man and the human races. He has published various works in this field, among which we shall mention Cranios Portugueses (1898–1899), La Capacité du Crâne et la Composition Ethnique probable du Peuple Portugais (a paper presented to the Anthropological Society of Paris in 1895) and O Povo Português sob o ponto de vista antropologico (a lecture given at the Lisbon Geographical Society on 6 March 1909).

Dr Costa Ferreira has contributed to the Jornal dos Medicos e Farmaceuticos, the Clinique Infantile, the Medicina Moderna, the Movimento Medico, the Anais da Academia Politecnica do Porto, the Boletim da Sociedade Portuguesa de Sciencias Naturais, etc. He is one of the Madeirans who have rendered the finest service to science and who most adorn the gallery of Portuguese naturalists.

Dr Costa Ferreira was in Funchal in June 1922, travelling on from here to the Cape of Good Hope and then to Lourenço Marques, where he intended to organise the Anthropological Museum and carry out various studies in the province. He never began this work and these studies, however, for he took his own life in that Portuguese city in Africa on 15 July 1922, that is, only a very few days after arriving there. Parliament granted Costa Ferreira’s widow an annual pension of 3,600 escudos (written 3:600$00), and the Municipal Council of Funchal, at its meeting of 21 September 1922, gave the name of our ill-fated fellow countryman to the former Rua do Carmo (‘Carmel’).