Samuel Barnsley Pessoa and the social determinants of rural endemic diseases

摘要

This article analyzes the main aspects of the trajectory, the ideas and the academic and political activism of Samuel Barnsley Pessoa (1898-1976). It reveals that Samuel Pessoaa€?s activism must also be understood in the context of his communist militancy and highlights the fact that one of the original contributions of his work was the establishment of the relationship between agrarian structure and rural endemic diseases, between large and unproductive estates and disease and adherence to a project of transformation of Brazilian society.