Rego (Dr António Balbino do)

He was a native of mainland Portugal and was born on 23 May 1874. In 1900 he completed his medical training at the Porto School, and in 1904 he was appointed director of the Laboratory of Bacteriology and Hygiene (Laboratório de Bacteriologia e Higiene) in Funchal, which had recently been established by the District General Council (Junta Geral) of this district.

Dr Balbino do Rego was practising privately as a physician in this city and carrying out his official duties as director of the Bacteriology Laboratory when, towards the end of 1905, a disease of suspicious character appeared here in Madeira. The health authorities were obliged to confine those who had been struck by it in the Lazareto de Gonçalo Aires (‘Gonçalo Aires quarantine hospital’), which had been turned into an isolation hospital, and the director of the Laboratory of Bacteriology and Hygiene was placed in charge of that hospital. The sad and regrettable events that followed are briefly narrated in the articles Popular Riots (Volume II, page 404), Bubonic Plague (Volume III, page 77) and Popular Poetry (Volume III, page 87), and we refer readers to them, so as to avoid needless and tedious repetition.

Dr Balbino do Rego’s error was to insist on keeping the patients in absolute isolation, cut off from all communication. This measure was necessary and fully justified in principle, but given the circumstances of the time, and in particular the reprehensible attitude of the press and of politicians, it would have been wise to relax it without harm to public health, as was eventually done, though belatedly. He committed no other fault and no other error. It must be said, however, that the nursing staff of the isolation hospital left much to be desired, and that various abuses and even excesses took place, for which its director was not responsible. The history of those events has not yet been written with complete impartiality, and so we are pleased to record in this work some material that may serve for a conscientious study of this turbulent period of Madeiran history.

After the events at the Lazareto (‘quarantine hospital’), Dr Balbino do Rego had his house stoned by the populace, even though a naval detachment was posted beside it. He was forced to take refuge in the Fort of São Lourenço (St Lawrence), from where he went aboard the D. Carlos, finally leaving for Lisbon on the Companhia Insulana steamer.

Dr Balbino do Rego later returned to Madeira on the orders of Councillor (conselheiro, honorary title of the royal council) João Franco, Minister of the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal), to take charge once again of the Bacteriology Laboratory. The popular demonstrations, however, took on so serious a character that they compelled the local authorities to prevent the physician from landing. He left for the capital on the very day he arrived in our port, passing directly from the vessel that had brought him from Lisbon to the one that took him back there.

Dr António Balbino do Rego was appointed, by competitive examination, physician and surgeon of the civil hospitals of Lisbon and also director of the Anthropometric Post of the Civil Police of that city (1921).

In 1907 Dr Balbino do Rego published two interesting pamphlets entitled Um ano Depois Assumptos Madeirenses and Na Ilha da Madeira Hospital Improvisado, which contain valuable material for the study of the bubonic plague epidemic on this island.