Henrique da Rocha Lima

Abstract

Brazilian physician and researcher Henrique da Rocha Lima was born in 1879 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, where he studied medicine and obtained the degree of M.D. in 1901. He specialized in Clinical Medicine in Germany and was the ambassador in European countries of the scientific medicine that emerged from the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in the early twentieth century. Rocha Lima has discovered the causative agent of typhus and had a major contribution to the studies of yellow fever, Chagas disease, Carrión’s disease and histoplasmosis. His genius, his research and his discoveries projected his name, and, with it, the image of Brazil in the international scientific scene.

Growth and Maintenance of Wolbachia in Insect Cell Lines

“…Wolbachia was described during the historical period when arthropod-borne intracellular bacteria were first appreciated as pathogens that cause disease in humans. Notable discoveries during that time included those of Howard Ricketts, who observed that a tick-borne bacterium, now known as Rickettsia rickettsii, was the causative agent of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever [11], and Henrique da Rocha Lima, who described Rickettsia prowazekii as the cause of epidemic typhus [12]. Simeon Burt Wolbach was involved in identification of the louse as the vector of typhus [13], and it is not surprising that he noticed similarities between arthropod-borne pathogens and the intracellular bacteria now known as Wolbachia.…”