This article was based on an examination of newspapers, reports, and memorial texts. It aims at offering a historiographical contribution about the creation of the Institute for Tropical Medicine (IMT, Instituto de Medicina Tropical), approved in January 1959 after an institutional movement led by Prof. Carlos da Silva Lacaz, who was also its first director. The objective is to highlight important factors that contributed to the decision of creating an institute of Tropical Medicine in the Brazilian city of São Paulo, capital of the state of São Paulo. The first of them was to internationalize the Brazilian Tropical Medicine, namely its relationship with Portuguese tropicalists that was consubstantiated with the migration of Brazilians, particularly from the city of São Paulo, to European institutes of Tropical Medicine. The presence of rural endemic diseases in the state, which were becoming increasingly visible in the capital due to migratory movements to the big city, also contributed to its creation.
Keywords: Institute for Tropical Medicine of São Paulo; Tropical Medicine; Rural endemic diseases
