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His studies are a fusion of cultural, zoological, archaeological, ethnographic, botanical, anthropological and medical-clinical notes when dealing with personalities, institutions, scientific currents, teaching models or medical vocabulary to update the history of medicine, demonstrating by the bibliography he consulted a deep font of knowledge that engaged in a dialogue with the international research panorama. As for other historical topics he gave his attention to, his scientific objectivity became compromised with his biased treatment of such topics as the Portuguese Expansion or the Overseas Territories, chapters that were agreeable to the Estado Novo as grounds for the political positions adopted, which were analysed according to the principles of Civilisation, Christianisation and Portuguese Culture on the world stage. Although he explored in great detail the factors of national decadence as a lesson to remember for the present and the future, what primarily stand out are the golden facts of the historical reality of Portugal in its heyday, but contextualised within a civic and spiritual view of History which he sought to transpose to the universality of the human past.
Luís de Pina received various national and international decorations from Spain, Italy, the Holy See and Cuba. He finally retired in 1970 when he reached the legal retirement age and died in the city of Porto on 29 April 1972. His cultural and scientific legacy merited extraordinary recognition during his lifetime as can be seen not only by the many national prizes he was awarded for his publications (António Enes, Maximiano Lemos and Alvarenga), but also from the numerous invitations he received from important foreign figures to set up Portuguese sections or to become associated to scientific institutions. For example, he was linked to almost fifty cultural and scientific groups and bodies either as a member or as an academic. Among these were the Instituto Português de Arqueologia, História e Etnografia, the Société Française d'Histoire de la Médecine, the Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, the Sociedade Anatómica Luso-Hispano-Americana, the Instituto de História da Medicina do Rio de Janeiro and the Accademia del Mediterraneo, and he was also the academic holder of ‘Chair number 12’ of the Portuguese Academy of History (1945). A multifaceted man in terms of human knowledge, “Luís de Pina, a convinced humanist” (Professor Dr. Luís de Pina, 1998, p. 81) was the author of a bibliographic legacy that numbers over three hundred publications, without counting the many unpublished works he preferred not to publish or had no opportunity to do so, which cover a wide variety of fields ranging from Anthropology to Anatomy, Forensic Medicine, Pedagogy, the History of Medicine and the History of Science. Finally, mention should be made of the fact that he collaborated on some of the most important Portuguese works of the 20th century: Damião Peres’ História de Portugal (History of Portugal), the História da Expansão Portuguesa no Mundo (History of the Portuguese Expansion in the World) and the Grande Enciclopédia Luso-Brasileira (Great Luso-Brazilian Encyclopaedia).
