[CASTRO, José Joaquim de]. Aviso ao público [Notification to the community on the exclusive right to sell the medical formula “Agua de Inglaterra”]

RARE BROADSIDE CONCERNING A DRUG INTRODUCED AND SOLD IN BRAZIL BY A DESCENDANT OF THE PORTUGUESE JEWISH PHYSICIAN, JACOB DE CASTRO SARMENTO. This document published by the Marrano José Joaquim de Castro is a public notification of the exclusive right to sell the medical formula known as “Agua de Inglaterra,” a derivative of quinine, granted to the Royal Factory owned by De Castro. This exclusive right had been originally granted by the King of Portugal to the Marrano André Lopes de Castro, father of the mentioned José Joaquim. The present announcement states that whomever sells an imitation of the formula, by refilling empty bottles risks imprisonment. It further states that the authentic Agua de Inglaterra can be recognized by the mark and signature of one of the de Castros. Only one copy of this broadside is extant, (in the Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon). It offers a unique insight at the exceptionally successful medicinal drug based upon a ‘secret formula’, a derivative of quinine, a medicine that proved highly effective in the treatment of fever, especially related to malaria. The original formula had been invented by the Portuguese Jewish physician Fernão Mendes (1720) at Lisbon. Later, another Portuguese Jew, the physician Jacob de Castro Sarmento (1691-1762), who lived as an exile in London from 1721, when he fled from the Inquisition, further developed the medicine into “Agua de Inglaterra” or “English water” using quinine from the cinchona trees of Peru. He obtained extraordinary success in the commercialization of this product and in its use to treat fever. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Marrano André Lopes de Castro, a nephew of De Castro Sarmento, obtained the authorization granted by the King of Portugal to prepare and sell the formula at his factory in Lisbon. In a monographic study on this medicine and its Jewish inventors, the Portuguese scholar Augusto d’Esaguy mentions that the formula of “Agua de Inglaterra” was especially successful in Brazil, notably in Pernambuco, which is corroborated in this document through its mention of the city of Pará belonging to this State. In Pará, the “Agua de Inglaterra” was distributed by António and Manuel Martins Pereira, the resellers appointed by José Joaquim de Castro. Although the family link has still to be proven, it is highly probable that the Pereiras were also Marranos and related to José Joaquim de Castro. It should be noted that Pernambuco had a considerable population of Jewish descent, even after the Portuguese Jewish community there had fled the region after its reconquest by the Portuguese in 1645. Given the extraordinary caution demonstrated by De Castro in the commercialization of his medicine, it was logical that he would only rely on commercial partners to whom he was tied by kinship. See Augusto Toledano d’Esaguy, Sobre a “Agua de Inglaterra”, Imprensa Médica, 23 (1959), pp. 407-413. [In this article, Esaguy documents that André Lopes de Castro was a nephew of Jacob de Castro Sarmento, and therefore, that José Joaquim de Castro was also family-related to Castro Sarmento]. And: Carlos da Silva Araujo, Fatos e personagens da história da medicina e da farmácia no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro, 1979, 2 vols. Vol. 2, p. 384. [Follows Esaguy in the Jewish link or family relation between José Joaquim de Castro, his father André Lopes de Castro and Jacob de Castro Sarmento]