In the late nineteenth century, health service reports constituted a repository of information on the main diseases in Mozambique and the impacts of their frequency, as well as on the procedures and methods used to fight disease within a regional framework whose description indicates a broad knowledge of the characteristics and potentials of the various districts and of the living conditions of the people. The objective of this article is to highlight that these reports constitute a privileged source not only for the study of the process of cementing Portuguese colonial rule in Mozambique, but also for the study of tropical medicine from a perspective that takes into account the specific conditions of the region, and which provides historical information on the analysis of the problems related to disease and cure.