Bernardino António Gomes

Bernardino António Gomes (22 September 1806 – 8 April 1877)

Biography Bernardino António Gomes was the son of noted physician, pioneering dermatologist, chemist, and botanist of name, Bernardino António Gomes Sr. (1768–1823), and his wife Leonor Violante Rosa Mourão (1775–1864). He was baptised on 9 October 1806, in the parish of Santa Engrácia, Lisbon. At the invitation of the Marquis of Palmela, who was part of the Liberal government-in-opposition, Bernardino António Gomes rejoined the Liberal forces in Terceira Island in the Azores: he would later take part in the Landing at Mindelo, the turning point of the Civil War, and was in the besieged resistance at the Siege of Porto (during which he provided medical assistance due to a cholera outbreak).

In 1858, Bernardino António Gomes became embroiled in a heated pamphlet war with the Duke of Saldanha, one of the leading promoters of homeopathy and other systems of alternative medicine like mesmerism or the "Raspail method" in the country. The tone of the replies quickly escalated, with Bernardino António Gomes protesting that the Duke was hardly an authority when he clearly had so little baggage and was armed with such lacking medical literature — something, he wrote, that did not stop him from openly casting doubt on science and making the public mistrustful of medical practitioners.

He was appointed First Physician of the Royal Chamber in 1864, by King Luís I, following the death of Francisco Elias Rodrigues da Silveira, 1st Baron of Silveira; Gomes refused the title of Baron that was customarily bestowed upon those filling that position at court.

On two different occasions, in 1843–4 and 1864–6, Bernardino António Gomes served as President of the Lisbon Society of Medical Sciences.

As a natural historian, Bernardino António Gomes published an exhaustive review of the fossil flora of the Carboniferous systems in Portugal (1865), and was a contributor in the Catalogus Plantarum Horti Botanici Medico-Cirurgicae Scholae Olisiponensis (1851).

He married Maria Leocádia Fernandes Tavares de Barros (1818–1854) in the parish of Encarnação, Lisbon, on 14 October 1837. They were the parents of botanist, forestry engineer, and Lazarite priest Bernardino António de Barros Gomes (1839–1910), and statesman Henrique de Barros Gomes (1843–1898).

Distinctions National orders

Foreign orders