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U.Porto Memory

University of Porto Famous Alumni

Roberto Frias

Roberto Frias 1853-1918 Doctor, surgeon and university teacher

Roberto Belarmino do Rosário Frias, son of António José de Frias and D. Angélica Frias, was born in Arporá, in the district of Bardez, New Goa, on 5 June 1853.
He completed high school (1870) and took the Theology course at the Diocesan Seminar in India, which he completed at the age of 19, and then returned to Portugal.
Here, he enrolled in the University of Coimbra to pursue his Theology studies, but before he was ordained he decided to change to Law, and later to Medicine.

His family was not at all pleased with this decision and even stopped funding his studies. At that time, Roberto Frias settled in Porto where he enrolled in the Medical-Surgical School of Porto, and had as fellow students Tito Fontes, Júlio Franchini, Júlio de Matos and Basílio Teles. Her taught to support himself.

He completed the degree on 15 October 1880, defending the thesis O crime (apontamentos para a systematização da criminalidade) [Crime (notes on the systematization of criminality]. He earned honorific distinctions, prizes and commendations, in most of the subjects (honorific distinctions in 1877, when he repeated Anatomy, and also in Physiology; in 1880, he won the 2^nd prize in Childbirth and the 1^st prize in Medical Clinic and Surgical Clinic, as well as honorific distinctions in Forensic Medicine).
He then went to work in Caparica as a municipal doctor. However, he felt the need to pursue his medical studies abroad, namely in hospitals in Paris, London and India. In this former Portuguese state, where he lived between 1882 and 1887, he practiced as staff doctor and taught at the Goa Medical School for two years.

He returned to Porto, where he competed for the position of Demonstrating Fellow of the Surgical Department. He held this post between 1887 and 1895.
In the three subsequent years (1895-1898), he served as Substitute Fellow and was in charge of several chairs of absent full professors. On 26 May 1898, he was appointed for the chair of Operations, and in October for the chair of Surgical Clinic.

Roberto Frias was a remarkable doctor in the private and public sectors, but also a competent teacher and surgeon. Many of his surgical procedures were the subject of several theses, such as those by Torquato Brochado, António Augusto Fernandes, Rodrigues Maia, Felisberto Rebordão, Albino de Azevedo Maia, Albino Torres and António Feliciano Botelho, etc.).

He presented scientific papers in many places, for example at the Association of Portuguese Doctors - North Region, at the Lusitanian Medical Association, at the Medical Union Society and at the Arab Salon of Palácio da Bolsa (closing session of the 4^th Congress of the National League against Tuberculosis, in 1907). He wrote articles on Medicine, published in "Gazeta Médica do Porto" and in "Portugal Médico", to name but a few.

At the end of his life, after abandoning the clinical practice he wanted to write a medical book; however, he was not able to do so as he fell ill with typhus fever while treating a patient. He died on 18 April 1918.
(Universidade Digital / Gestão de Informação, 2009)