Francisco González del Álamo Martínez de Figueroa

Initiator of medical education in Cuba, two years before the inauguration of the Real y Pontificia Universidad de San Gerónimo de La Habana (Universidad de La Habana). His work was pioneering in the process that made it possible to convert medicine in Cuba into a science.

This pioneer of medical teaching was born in La Habana. He studied at the Universidad de México, where he graduated as a bachelor in Medicine on April 28, 1699. After being examined and approved there by the Real Tribunal del Protomedicato on May 24, 1700, he returned to La Habana, whose Cabildo authorized him on November 4 of the same year to practice his profession, after verification of his degree by doctors Francisco Moreno de Alba and Francisco Teneza Rubira.

On June 3, 1711, he reported to the City Council that he had printed a treatise regarding a consultation he had made in 1706, "on whether fattened pork meat is harmful and the cause of the epidemic and various diseases that this city has suffered." As for the title, place, and date of printing of the document, there is controversy among bibliographers, and although it has not been preserved, in the Actas Capitulares of the City Council of La Habana it is recorded that its author donated some copies, which "were ordered to be attached to the records of that day's session." This proves that the publication, whose printing almost all scholars have agreed was done in Ciudad de México, made bachelor González del Álamo the first Cuban medical publisher.

On January 12, 1726, he inaugurated the first course of Medicine taught in Cuba, in the Convento de San Juan de Letrán, by virtue of the license granted for this purpose by the Very Reverend Father Master Fr. Thomas de Linares, prior of that convent, who had authorization to found a university that would operate in the same establishment. His first disciples were three young men who were at that time studying theology for the ecclesiastical career, in which they had already received minor orders. These young men later joined their professor in the group that formed the first faculty of the Real y Pontificia Universidad de San Gerónimo de La Habana, after becoming the first Cubans graduated as doctors from that institution.

Once the concession to found the University was received in La Habana, the faculty was formed, and González del Álamo was appointed Professor of Prima (Physiology). However, although he was the first to hold the chair, he could not be the first to teach it after the faculty was created, as he died before the start of the academic course at the newly inaugurated University, which also prevented him from obtaining the higher degrees of licentiate and doctor in Medicine, to which he was entitled by his status as a professor.

In his practice as a clinical physician, he shared with doctor Teneza the application of bloodletting. It is also known that he intervened in a lawsuit against the pharmacist Lázaro del Rey, in whose pharmacy he forbade his patients to buy medicines, according to him, due to the poor preparation of his drugs.

He died on March 2, 1728, and was buried in the same Convento de San Juan de Letrán, wearing the habit of Señor Santo Domingo de Guzmán, to whose penitent third order he belonged. It is due to him that medicine was the first discipline taught in the country with a professional character.

Source: En Caribe.org