Ricardo de Almeida Jorge (1858-1939) presented the opening discussion "Um ensaio sobre o nervosismo" ("An assay on nervousness") when contesting for a place in the surgical section of Medical School of Porto. He gave a dissertation on the "Localizações motrizes do cérebro" ("Motor regions of the brain") (1880). He distinguished himself as a hygienist, as a Medicine historian and as a pedagogue. His articles reflect a deep knowledge. He is firm in his statements traducing a balanced mind and expressing a unique literary beauty. His life was in danger when he identified the bubonic plague epidemic in Porto and suggested, thereafter, the installation of a sanitary belt, being transferred to the Medical School of Lisbon.
The Room Ricardo Jorge enhances the Medicine of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. It comprises a vast collection of instruments, most of them kept in elaborated cases, directed to skull trepanation, limb amputation and lithotomy. In exhibition you can see some examples of physical hæmostasis, such as cauteries, screw tourniquets and artery forceps. The practical and the instrumental equipment include surgeon's lancets, scarificators, a basin, surgeon barber's chairs and enema syringes. The surgeon's lancet used to embalm the Sardinia's king, Charles Albert from Piedmont and Sardinia (1798- 1849), by Professor Manuel Maria da Costa Leite (1813- 1896), from the Medical School of Porto can be found framed and exposed in a highly adorned easel. The instruments and devices of Physiology and Ophthalmology belonging to Professor Plácido da Costa (1849-1916), much of which invented by the Professor himself and manufactured in the Medical School's workshop, are exhibited in this room. Two models of Laennec's stethoscope and two items adapted to fetal hearing, a row of microscopes from the Bacteriology laboratory, Pharmacy and homeopathic vases, child milk bottles and a eighteenth century doctor's case can also be admired. In this room too is the collection of diplomas on Bleeding, Surgery, Pharmacy, Medicine and Medicine and Surgery, the most ancient of which are from D. José and D. Maria era, filled with colorful a representation that represents a unique national collection.
