Amaro de Almeida

A graduate in Medicine, Dr. Amaro de Almeida worked as an intern at Hospital de Santa Marta and developed a hospital career. In the 1960’s we was hired to teach Therapeutics at the Institute for Hydrology and Climatology and published several works on these subject-matters.

His professional activity also included lecturing and he participated in many international congresses, complementing this work with the management of medical journals. As a consequence Dr. Amaro de Almeida was also a member of scientific societies.

He published miscellaneous articles, with special reference to the “Olisipo” journal (Grupo Amigos de Lisboa) where he published material on fado. He simultaneously wrote poetry books, among which “Variações Sobre o Fado” and “Redondilha Maior”, with the pseudonym José Amaro. (cf. Eduardo Sucena, “Lisboa o Fado e os Fadistas”, p. 289).

Apart from being a respected physician, Dr. Amaro de Almeida was very close to the artists – namely the Fado singers, and he was always ready to take care of their health problems without pay.

From 1960 to 1965, together with Dr. Nazaré Vaz, he provided free medical care in the framework of the clinical body of the Excursionist Group "Previdentes do Fado" whose mentors were José Maria Nóbrega, Casimiro Ramos, Amadeu Ramim, Pedro Leal, Alfredo Rodrigues and Carlos Gonçalves. This organization was founded to provide assistance in sickness and unemployment to the entire Fado family. Nevertheless it only lasted 5 years.

Even after 1965, Dr. Amaro de Almeida continued to help those in need until his death in 1976. History would remember him as "father of the fado singers".

His devotion and passion for Fado are also patent in his writings. Dr. Amaro de Almeida “cultivated the quatrain, the poetic form of his preference”. (cf. Eduardo Sucena, Lisboa, o Fado e os Fadistas, p. 290)

Source:

“Ecos de Portugal”, 15 October 1949;