Bezerra de Menezes and Spiritist Healing in Late-Imperial Brazil

Record summary

Adolfo Bezerra de Menezes, a physician and politician who became a leading Brazilian spiritist, wrote and spoke about mediumistic healing while serving as a major figure in the Federação Espírita Brasileira during the 1890s. His career is useful for comparing medical authority, charitable practice, religious conversion, and claims of treatment through spirits. The historical record does not establish the efficacy of such treatments; it documents advocacy, reported cases, institutional conflict, and changing legal attitudes. Medical biographies, Reformador, and parliamentary or press sources can separate biography from hagiography.