The teaching of medicine in Lisbon began at the Hospital de Todos-os-Santos , which opened in 1504 and continued to operate regularly for 250 years until the earthquake of 1755. With the 1755 earthquake, its facilities were badly damaged, but it continued to operate until it was transferred in 1774 to the Colégio de Santo-o-Novo, later baptised as the São José Hospital, which took over the legacy of its predecessor, Todos-os-Santos, and concentrated the teaching of medicine there.
The Royal School of Surgery was born at the Royal Hospital of São José on 24 June 1825 and in 1835 it became the Lisbon Medical-Surgical School, again undergoing a name change, this time on 22 April 1911, now known as the Lisbon School of Medicine, in a new building in Campo Santana, which would become the home of Medicine School between 1911 and 1953. However, time would prove that although majestic, the space in Campo de Santana was not enough to accommodate all the disciplines and practices of medicine, creating the need for proximity to a hospital, as a clear extension of more practical and real teaching. Physically distant from the São José and Santa Marta Hospitals, the Faculty moved to its current location in 1953, becoming known as the Lisbon Teaching Hospital and only later as the Santa Maria Hospital.
Lisbon School of Medicine thus entered what was the largest building in the country, the School that would only later receive the Hospital.
The centenary institution that had been the Royal School of Surgery (1825-1835) and the Lisbon Medical-Surgical School (1835-1911) and which began as part of the Hospital de Todos-os-Santos (1504-1755), has thus come to the present, undergoing metamorphoses, various transformations, mergers and new partners, and settling in its final home in 1953 - 1954.
On 22 April it will celebrate its 70th year since occupying its current building, Santa Maria.
A hospital/school of long history and reference, it has relearned its role in medicine, looking to the future as well and investing in new satellite spaces where it continues to develop its heritage, but with sophistication. With two more buildings, Egas Moniz and Reynaldo dos Santos, this school is home to science and technology as an extension of medicine, always pioneering and up-to-date, and responsible for training those who are a large part of the future of medicine in Portugal.
Source - Victor Oliveira - "Art and History at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon"
