Scleroderma

On 10 September 1976, I was the head of the medical clinic of the Cardoso Fontes Hospital, and they had a consultant dermatologist, Dr Ryssia Alvarez Floriao who works very close to here at Sans Pena Square. She did a diagnosis with 3 biopsies of a lady who was admitted to hospital. This patient who had been unable to walk for 8 months was admitted to hospital, she arrived on a stretcher, paralysed. Dr Ryssia did three biopsies and sent them to Dr Gloria Moraes head of Pathological Anatomy Dept who gave her medical opinion: Terminal phase of scleroderma. Then Dr. Ryssia decided to give a lesson. Every Monday we had a lesson on cases that were not routine and this was a very rare case, scleroderma is an auto-immune disease that is unusual. She gave a very beautiful lesson and I learned a lot because I didn't know anything about scleroderma. I knew it from books, but I had never seen a scleroderma patient and I was her boss. When she finished the lesson, Dr Ryssia asked the nurse to take the patient away. I understood that now was the time to hear what was to be done for the patient. I said: 'You asked to take the patient away for her not to hear.' She said: 'It is true. There is nothing I can do for this patient.' I said to Ryssia: 'Will you pass this patient to me, so I can apply a technique which is not usual and is called auto-hemotherapy?' She laughed and said in front my two assistants and I: 'Dr Moura, you know that I arrived from the USA in May and I was a resident doctor there in a clinic to which all the cases of scleroderma in the USA converged to and this clinic was nothing more than a repository of scleroderma patients.

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• Scleroderma