Eusebio Hernández Pérez

He was born in Colón, Matanzas province. At 16 years of age, he participated in the Uprising of Jagüey Grande, during the Ten Years' War.

In 1874, at 21 years of age, his family sent him to Madrid, Spain, to study Medicine, and it was on the peninsula itself where he established ties with the independence revolution through the presence of General Calixto García, one of the heroes of Cuba's wars of independence.

In August 1879, at 26 years of age, as one among many patriots convinced that only the path of arms would lead to emancipation, he participates in Santiago de Cuba alongside the organizers of the Little War (1879-1880). Once this concluded, he went to Jamaica and in Kingston he met Máximo Gómez, placing himself under his orders.

He assisted in 1880, Bernarda Toro Pelegrín (Manana), wife of Máximo Gómez, in the birth of her son Fernando.

In 1881, he was designated civil coordinator of a military conspiracy. He worked as a professor at the University, directed a hospital, and wrote in newspapers and magazines.

In the period between 1880 and 1887, his ties with General Antonio Maceo were very close, whose personality he studied with the interest of a psychologist and the constancy of a historian. About the hero of Baraguá he wrote: "He nullified the Pact of Zanjón, reduced it to a truce in Baraguá and defeated all those who participated in it."

By 1887, he completed his licentiate in Medicine in Madrid and later, taking into account the failure of the movement from 1884 to 1886, stubbornly sustained by Generals Máximo Gómez, Antonio Maceo, Crombet, Carrillo (Pancho), Emilio Núñez, many other illustrious Cubans and himself, and provided with a license from General Gómez and in agreement with Carrillo, Leandro Rodríguez and other friends, he decided to go to Europe to specialize, which would allow him to return to New York to practice his patriotic aspirations. In this way, he completed studies in Obstetrics and Gynecology in Paris—where, in 1889, he met Pinard, whose scientific and political history he himself considers has many points of similarity with his own.

This circumstance, among others, earned him Pinard's sympathies (whom he considered a great patriot) and allowed him to be among the disciples of the reformer of contemporary Obstetrics at the Baudelocque Clinic, which he headed, from 1890, as professor of obstetrics at the Faculty of Paris.

An enthusiastic collaborator in the obstetric revolution initiated by Pinard, Eusebio Hernández coincided with the fervor of abdominal palpation and its complements, version by external maneuvers and measurable palpation, which transformed obstetric diagnosis.

He attended the clinical and anatomical demonstration of the mechanisms of labor, the clinical and anatomical demonstration of delivery; the renaissance of symphysiotomy; the establishment of scientific treatment of hemorrhages from placenta previa; the regulation of internal version and most maneuvers. He applauded Pinard's first efforts on behalf of unfortunate poor mothers and helpless unprotected children, an act that generated a new science: Childcare, which Hernández considered sister to Sociology for its importance in the study, preservation, development and improvement of the human species, for which reason he reflected that it could be called "medicine of the species."

These studies of expansion and correction made him think about the benefit it could bring to Cuba to make known, with Pinard's authorization, the functioning of the Baudelocque Clinic in the Medical-Surgical Chronicle and in other Cuban medical publications of that time.

Similar desires to generalize the knowledge and European practices of the era in the specialty led him to Berlin to study operative Gynecology, principally in its relationships with Obstetrics.

Later his health and political events made him return to Cuba and he set out to accomplish some of what he had seen and learned abroad. Havana lacked a true obstetric clinic, not due to fault of the professor who held the chair at that time, nor of his predecessors, but due to the defective and somewhat meager university teaching of the colonial era.

For similar reasons official teaching of Gynecology was unknown. Then, by initiative of Dr. Pereda, accompanied by Varela Zequeira, Francisco Domínguez Roldán and other enthusiastic young men, a free school of Medicine was established, in which Dr. Eusebio Hernández was reserved the chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which he taught (during the short time that school existed) in the form of quarterly courses, dealing in them only with the part constituted by science as a form of preparation and propaganda.

Among his numerous disciples were the then Secretary of Health, Dr. Manuel Varona, the reputed surgeon Enrique Fortún, the equally notable obstetrician Ernesto Aragón and distinguished doctors and public figures of that time, such as Nicolás Ferrer, Lico Lores and Guillermo Mascaró. His individual efforts succeeded in awakening the suspicion of the Colonial authorities and somewhat the enmity of some members of the University, although truly in small numbers.

In mid-1892 he performed the first symphysiotomy by Pinard. Then in 1894, he returned ill to Cuba.

The Clarion of the independence war sounded and he took his place of honor in the ranks of the liberating Army, which opened a parenthesis of three long years in his scientific work.

In 1895, he embarked for New York, to actively participate in the preparation of the War of '95 with the Cuban Revolutionary Committee in exile.

By March 1896, he shipwrecked along with Calixto García on the "Hawkins". Under his orders he disembarked some time later on the "Bermuda" and came under the command of Major General José Maceo on its General Staff.

He participated, among others, in the combats of Loma de Hierro, Guáimaro, Las Tunas, Guisa and Saratoga. In that same year 1896 he declined his election as Representative to the Assembly of La Yaya and participated in the commission that wrote the Military Health Law of the Liberating Army.

In May 1896, General Máximo Gómez granted him the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. With his forces he conducted the military campaign until the Government Council demanded his services as Secretary of Foreign Relations of the Republic in Arms, a position he soon resigned from due to disagreements with president Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, rejoining the liberating ranks alongside Gómez and later with Calixto García.

In the insurgent field he earned the promotion to Brigadier General, but the increasing deterioration of his health caused him to be authorized to leave for abroad (1898), from where he learned of North American intervention (Spanish-Cuban-American War) in the conflict.

During his participation in the struggles for independence, he was an effective collaborator of Lieutenant General Antonio Maceo, whose memory he systematically defended.

By 1899, he returned to Cuba accompanying the body of Calixto García.

It was in 1899 when he was appointed Brigadier General of Health by the Executive Commission of the Assembly of El Cerro.

During the entire period of North American occupation and later, in the mediated Republic, he maintained firm patriotic convictions continuously supporting the best and most progressive causes, rejecting annexationist positions, even supporting the socialist state that emerged in Russia.

Dr. Eusebio Hernández was committed to the reality of the humble. Emigration was for him "a political and social school," as there he observed the differences between rich and poor. His social and political commitment guided the critique of the era.

Upon his return to the capital in 1899, once independence from Spain was obtained, he continued his purposes, attempting this time to establish a clinic. Mrs. Rosalía Abreu gifted him the instruments and necessary furnishings for a childbirth clinic with free services. The Havana City Hall agreed to a subsidy of one thousand pesos monthly to help with its maintenance. He could not find a location to establish it and the intervening authorities would not cede one of the many unoccupied ones the State possessed. During this time Mrs. Rosalía Abreu and Dr. Eusebio Hernández succeeded in constituting a committee of ladies under her presidency, willing to create an endowment for the clinic, establish a workshop for pregnant women where clothes were prepared for the mothers and children who would leave it. Not even then did they give them the location.

At those moments, Mr. González Lanuza undertook university reform beginning with the faculty. He appointed a commission of University professors and private doctors of great reputation, who honored him by designating him to hold the chair of Obstetrics. Later Enrique José Varona, Secretary of Education, studied and had a complete teaching plan established in which he remained as professor of Obstetrics with his clinic.

In his 1912 Manifesto to the country he alerts the population about "the importance of the worker problem". He points to "the rural bohío and the dirty urban dwelling, commentary on the 104,000 children lost every five years." For the peasant he asks for the delivery of idle lands the State possesses and applauds the prohibition of their transfer to foreign hands. He also advocates for the liberation of women "from the yoke that man has imposed on her."

In his claim for the existential problems of those moments, it is not surprising to see him alongside Julio Antonio Mella for university reform in 1923, as he identified himself with progressive ideas and his close link with university students. Important is the work he carried out at the First Student Congress in 1923 and in the founding of the José Martí Popular University, alongside Mella. He trusted in the magnificent results that could be obtained from it for the improvement of Cuban society, pointing out the need for reforms in education and affirmed that "the Popular University was destined for a brilliant future for the benefit of the republic." This student project that opened the doors of the University to the working class, by virtue of enjoying the benefits that culture provides, had classes from Dr. Eusebio Hernández, among others. His work as a professor and his peculiar teaching method, always seeking renewal in university contents, made him an exceptional teacher. It is not coincidental that he was named the Father of Obstetrics in Cuba; he was a teacher to generations and formed disciples who excelled in the teaching of Medicine.