Gregorio Delgado García

A man who throughout his professional life has not stopped delving into the past of our history to highlight the most relevant facts and pay tribute to the most distinguished personalities of Cuban medical sciences. Martiano legítimo has followed the Master's guide: Honor, honor!.

Born in Melena del Sur, grandson of a pharmacist, son of a historian and husband of a nurse, this eternal fighter against ignorance, battler for scientific rigor in historical research, proud of his national identity and his belonging to the Hospital General Calixto García, to which he has been linked since his time as a student assistant in the bacteriology department, arrived at the Dispensario de Oro de Guisa, in the Sierra Maestra, in 1964, to begin his Rural Service.

From there he went to Maffo, later took over the direction of the Jiguaní hospital and finally founded the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes hospital. He had gone for one year to Oriente and stayed for six.

Upon his return to the capital he began to pursue a specialty in Microbiology. In 1972, already with the title of specialist, he was appointed Historian of Public Health, following the death of César Rodríguez Expósito. From that moment on he shared his work at Hospital Diez de Octubre, as a teacher, and his work as a historian.

He founded the Chair of History of Public Health, in the now-defunct Institute for Health Development, which later became the Faculty of Public Health and is today the National School of Public Health, where he has been teaching postgraduate courses for 22 years.

His work as a researcher is conducted in the mansion on Calzada de El Cerro, where the Office of the Historian of Public Health currently resides. There he works diligently to be able to edit the issues of the Cuadernos, a publication founded by his mentor, César Expósito, to whom he remains always faithful in memory.

With his agile step of a young wanderer he moves between the rich personal library in his home in El Vedado, inherited from his father, the illustrious historian of Melena del Sur, Gregorio Delgado Fernández, the library of the Office of the Historian of Public Health, in El Cerro, and the archive of the University of La Habana, where he has the ability to access the academic records of all physicians and dentists graduated in Cuba.

From his fruitful work one cannot fail to highlight his monograph The Finlaíst Doctrine, with which he obtained the Prize of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba in 1981, although of the work that he says he feels most proud of is the History of Higher Medical Education in Cuba from 1726 to 1900. He is also the author of 19 books, 13 pamphlets and more than 250 articles and essays. In 1997 he received the National Prize for Public Health, in the book category.

Vice President of the Cuban Societies of History of Medicine and History of Science and Technology. He is a member of the Societies of History of Medicine of Bulgaria, Bolivia, Seattle, USA, among others. He is a visiting professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Source: Infomed