The publication of his two-volume História da Medicina em Portugal (1889) was testament to his merit, his culture, erudition and pioneering effort in the History of Medicine; recognized as his masterpiece it was widely praised internationally for its solid historiographical value by such eminent figures in the field as Max Neuburger, Fielding Hudson Garrison and George Sarton. If in his academic dissertation he had acknowledged time restraints in deepening his historical researches, while conserving in a masterly way his conceptual line of history, he now extended his sweeping erudition to the early twentieth century with an assessment of the mass of documentation that he had been collecting in the course of his intellectual labours. And so in this, which is considered his magnum opus, he set out to revise and complete his study of the course of medicine in Portugal, with the same multi-faceted perspective of its position and tendencies over the centuries, while seeking to accompany the international work being done in order to highlight the contribution of the Portuguese whose best work had often been done abroad.

Although affected by hearing problems he was placed in the army reserve in 1911, and immediately decided to resign his position as a professor in the recently founded University of Porto and suspend his academic career. Five years later, however, he was invited by the Porto Faculty of Medicine to teach courses in Medical History and Philosophy and in Professional Ethics, and he became the first person in the country to hold a chair in the History of Medicine. In 1918 the Conselho Escolar [School Council] awarded him the degree of Doctor of Medicine and nominated him Director of the Faculty, a position he held until 1922. He also served briefly as Vice-Rector of the University of Porto from 1921, a position from which he retired just a few months before his death on 6 October 1923. In 1933, in a posthumous homage, the newly created Museum of the History of Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Porto was named after Maximiano Lemos, by way of recognition of his extraordinary merit as an intellectual, a scientist and a historian of medicine with a biography that runs to some 134 published books and essays.

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