War, Science, and Cultural Diplomacy in the Americas: Frank Wilson and Brazilian Cardiology

This paper analyzes how U.S. cultural diplomacy towards Latin America played a key role for institutionalizing Brazilian medicine around and after WWII. We focus on relationships between Frank Wilson, a University of Michigan professor internationally recognized for his studies on electrocardiography, and a group of physicians who created the specialty of cardiology in Brazil. Since the 1920s Latin American physicians had visited Wilson’s laboratory for specialized training. In 1942, Wilson made a long visit to Brazil and other countries in the region, sponsored by the Division of Cultural Relations of the United States Department of State, a unit formed as part of Roosevelt’s "good neighbor" policy. Sending a U.S. physician to Brazil under the State Department cultural relations program helped Brazilian physicians to legitimate themselves as specialists in heart disease, especially by claiming the specialized skills to manage electrocardiography, valued as symbolizing American medicine’s "modernity.” If affiliation with the "Wilson school" served the needs of Brazilian cardiologists, it was also the case that cooperation with Latin American physicians served the needs of Wilson's own interests and projects. His identity and practice as an "ambassador" of Latin America facilitated circulation of his ideas on the clinical applicability of EKG technology not only to the “other American republics” but also at U.S. cardiological centers. Historians have written about the transnational circulation of knowledge and scientific practices from a perspective that seeks to overcome the traditional dichotomy between "centers" and "peripheries." It may be useful to analyze how this circulation operated between the different "links" of this Brazil/U.S. medical network. To focus on specific events will help demonstrate how the idea of “global” or “transnational” does not disregard the local dimensions of these processes, but rather builds on them.