1Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical 45(1):1-2, jan-fev, 2012 Editorial/Editorial 1. Presidente da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical, Núcleo de Medicina

The concept of tropical diseases to denote those diseases occurring in the colonies arose with Patrick Manson and the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, at the very end of the XIX century. Our field of interest, known as Tropical Medicine, was born in this way, in the midst of the British Empire, and it spread to other colonial empires and to the tropical nations themselves, colonies or economic satellites of the metropolis1. Despite the efforts by Manson and other scholars to define Tropical Medicine, the modern concept remains vague and elusive. This imprecision is underscored in Wikipedia’s definitio