Fermín Valdés-Domínguez Quintanó

He was a fellow student of José Martí at the San Anacleto school and later as a student of Rafael María de Mendive.

In 1869 he founded the newspaper El Diablo Cojuelo. He enrolled at the University of Havana as a medical student.

In 1870 he was prosecuted for disloyalty, along with José Martí, and sentenced to six months in prison.

In 1871, detained with other medical students, eight of whom suffered the death penalty, he was sentenced to six years in prison.

He received his medical training at four universities. He pursued his medical studies in an extraordinarily irregular manner due to his revolutionary activities, partly alongside Martí, since his time at the Institute of Secondary Education in Havana.

With the title of bachelor of arts just issued on October 28, 1870, after a year in prison, he enrolled in the medical program at the Royal and Literary University of Havana for the 1870-1871 academic year. The curriculum in effect at that time in Cuba for this program was that of 1863 and comprised three stages: the premedical or preparatory course, lasting one year; the bachelor's in medicine lasting four years; the licentiate in medicine lasting two years and the doctorate in a final year. Therefore, had he followed his studies normally, he should have graduated as a licentiate in 1877 and as a doctor in medicine in 1878.

In June 1871 he passed the three subjects of the preparatory year, which were: General Chemistry, Experimental Physics and Natural History, the latter in turn comprising Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy and Geology. Almost midway through the course, on January 15, 1871, Martí left deported to Spain. On October 19 of that same year Valdés-Domínguez enrolled in the three subjects of the true first year of the program: Descriptive Anatomy 1st Course, Dissection Exercises 1st Course and Osteology Exercises.

The events of November 27, just as the 1871-1872 course began and his subsequent imprisonment until his final departure from Cuba on May 30, 1872, violently interrupted his medical studies. Nevertheless, already in Madrid alongside Martí, in June of that year, he was going to accomplish something truly incredible by enrolling at the Central University of Madrid, through independent study, not only in the subjects of the course he had nearly lost, but also in two subjects from the following year, Descriptive Anatomy and Dissection Exercises, both from the second course.

Valdés-Domínguez must have studied all of human anatomy very intensely in the next six months, because in December of that year, in search of a healthier and more economical environment that would allow them to continue their studies and improve their health, Martí and Valdés-Domínguez moved to Zaragoza and at its university, in extraordinary examinations through independent study, he passed all the anatomy subjects.

In Zaragoza, Valdés-Domínguez worked feverishly, undoubtedly advised by Martí, on writing his book, an exposé of the events of November 27, 1871. It followed the same objective developed by our National Hero in his book El Presidio Político en Cuba, published in Madrid, Imprenta de Ramón Ramírez, 1871, that is, the testimonial, dramatic, stark denunciation of the monstrous crimes of the Spanish colonial government on the Island, written in the first person by someone who had lived through and suffered them personally.

Having gained a year of studies, in the 1872-1873 course, Valdés-Domínguez enrolled, always through independent study, at the University of Zaragoza in the subject remaining from the second year, Human Physiology and the three from the third year: Private Hygiene, General Pathology and Pathological Anatomy and Surgical Anatomy, Dressings and Bandaging. To pass the first three in Zaragoza and the fourth in Valladolid.

In the following 1873-1874 course, the last he studied alongside Martí, he was going to make a truly titanic effort demonstrating notable intelligence. In that course he enrolled in all the subjects he needed to graduate as a licentiate in medicine and surgery, five in Zaragoza and six in Madrid. At the first he passed: Therapeutics, Materia Medica and the Art of Prescribing and Obstetrics and General Pathology of Women and Children. At the second he did not take exams, but in Valladolid, where he passed no less than: Medical Pathology, Surgical Pathology, Obstetric Clinic, Medical Clinic 1st Course, Surgical Clinic 1st Course, Public Hygiene and Legal Medicine and Toxicology and he had pending only the second courses of Medical Clinic and Surgical Clinic.

During the two academic years from 1872 to 1874 Valdés-Domínguez, while taking the subjects of Public and Private Hygiene, came into contact with the great School of Hygienists of Catalonia, in full apogee for years before, which would leave its evident mark not only on him but also on José Martí.

From late 1874, Valdés-Domínguez pursued the two subjects still pending, Medical Clinic and Surgical Clinic second courses, which he passed in Zaragoza (1874-1875), to complete and pass the exercises for the degree of licentiate in medicine and surgery on November 26, 1875, at the Central University of Madrid, two years before what normally should have been, despite the many difficulties suffered.

During the following course, 1875-1876, he enrolled in the subjects of the doctoral year, which were: History of Medical Sciences, Chemical Analysis Applied to Medical Sciences and Expansion of Normal and Pathological Histology, but he abandoned these studies to return to Cuba, which occurred in Havana on January 2, 1876. It does not appear in his old study record No. 14144 from the University of Havana that he examined the subjects for the doctorate or that he completed the exercises for such a degree, but he always appeared as a doctor and not as a licentiate in the Society of Clinical Studies of Havana and in the Anthropological Society of the Island of Cuba, to which he belonged, and in his medical publications in the Revista de la Crónica Médico-Quirúrgica de La Habana and Archivos de la Sociedad de Estudios Clínicos de La Habana.

In 1874 he visited France. He moved to Spain, where he continued his university studies. Once he completed his degree, he returned to Cuba.

If his studies were eventful, his professional practice would be no less so in many different places. From January 2, 1876 in Havana, he had to wait until June 5, 1878 for his title to be incorporated at the University of Havana so he could practice the profession. During that time he married, on February 25, 1876, his maternal cousin María Consuelo Quintanó y Ramos; he was in contact with Martí when he appeared secretly in Havana from January 6 to February 24, 1877.

On November 11, 1878 his only daughter was born, who died on September 26, 1879.

In 1881 he went to practice his profession in Santiago de las Vegas, from where he returned in 1883 to Havana and it is in this new stage, in the capital of the island, that he published some medical works between 1885 and 1886, to then, in an unexpected change, establish himself at the other end of the country, in Baracoa, with his wife and there practice general medicine and in particular forensic medicine and conduct some studies in archaeology, anthropology and plant health in 1890, he separated in 1893 from his first wife. For his professional work in the first city of Cuba the City Council granted him a certificate of merit.

There he directed El Cubano and collaborated in El Triunfo, El País and other publications.

In his house he organized gatherings which Martí attended.

Moved to the East, he dedicated himself to the study of yellow fever and the flora and fauna of the Baracoa region.

In 1892 he went to Venezuela as a representative of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and later to New York to establish contact with Martí, who sent him to Florida to develop a campaign in favor of the revolution.

He collaborated in Patria. He worked as a doctor in Key West until the outbreak of war in 1895. That year he arrived in Cuba in the expedition of Carlos Roloff. In Las Villas he organized the military health corps.

He attended the Assembly of Jimaguayú as a representative for Camagüey. He was undersecretary of foreign relations in the executive of the Republic in Arms and held the position of chief of staff of General Máximo Gómez. He attained the rank of Colonel in the liberating army.

He collaborated in Patria and Libertad, La Reforma and El Fígaro. He is the author of a discourse on Diseases of Bacterial Origin.

After the war he married in Tampa on December 26, 1898, Asunción Castillo y Camus, daughter of a Cuban patriot who emigrated to the United States and went to practice his profession, poor and honestly, as he had always done, in the remote town of Viñales, in the province of Pinar del Río. Very ill, almost paralyzed, he returned to Havana, where he lived in 1905, to die there on June 13, 1910.