Juan Guiteras Gener

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Distinguished hygienist physician, epidemiologist, writer and pedagogue. One of the most important in his specialty in Cuba, defender of the glory of Carlos J. Finlay. Considered the father of national medical parasitology. He transcended national limits to become an internationally recognized voice in his time. He was director of Public Health; first president of the Medical Federation of Cuba; member of the Royal Academy of Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences of Havana; and distinguished patriot of the revolutionary emigration.

He was a glory of Cuban and American medicine, a worthy and patriotic Cuban who, despite having lived for 30 years in the United States of North America, where he graduated as a physician, specialized as a Pathologist and became an authority in Tropical Medicine, always knew how to stand by the cause of his Homeland and did not hesitate to return to it and place himself at the service of the Medical Public Health of his era, which he helped to establish, alongside Carlos J. Finlay.

Son of the poet, pedagogue, novelist and costumbrista Eusebio Guiteras y Font, and of Josefina Gener y Puñales, both cousins and offspring of prominent families from the city of Matanzas, who gave that province and country personalities in History, Literature and Pedagogy, but above all, forgers of a nationality that they already felt stirring in their Cuban blood, and that they left shaped in their thought and work; for many of their members fought and gave their lives in the wars for the independence of Cuba.

Juan Guiteras Gener began his studies at the Matanzas school "La Empres", founded by his uncle Antonio Guiteras Font, and of which his father, Eusebio Guiteras, was also director.

This school founded by disciples of Don José de La Luz y Caballero was a true beacon of light that guided Matanzas thought toward an independent national consciousness. In this cloister he also completed his secondary education, graduating as a Bachelor of Arts in 1867, and in 1868, he began the preparatory course in Medicine in Havana and the first year of the program.

In 1868, due to the intensification of Spanish persecution toward the Guiteras-Gener families at the beginning of the First War of Independence, his parents had to emigrate to the United States, settling with those who had previously emigrated to Philadelphia, so Juan Guiteras continued his studies in Medicine and Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated as a Doctor in Medicine and Philosophy.

By curious coincidence, this same university, a few years before, had welcomed Carlos Juan Finlay y Barrés in its Medical classrooms, a towering personality of Cuban Medicine, to whose name that of Juan Guiteras y Gener would always be linked.

Dr. Juan Guiteras achieved in 1873 a first prize at the University of Pennsylvania for his thesis "Influence of Functional Activity on the Development of the Skeleton", truly innovative work for the time, which demonstrated the structural changes produced by the function that such anatomical structures would exercise.

From his graduation in 1873 until his definitive settlement in his homeland almost 30 years after the forced exile of 1869, he carried out the following activities:

- Internal Physician of the Philadelphia hospital in 1873.
- Visiting Physician of the same hospital from 1874 to 1879, who prepared the first text on Pathology of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was Instructor of Semiology.
- Physician of the Maritime Public Health of the U.S.A. in the "Marine Hospital Service" in 1879, serving in the hospitals of Saint Louis, New Orleans, Galveston, Key West and Charleston as technical expert on various epidemics of yellow fever.
- In 1879 he was appointed by the government of the United States, together with Drs. Stanford E. Chaille and J.M. Sternberg, to study the histopathology and conditions of production of yellow fever in Cuba, an occasion in which he meets Carlos J. Finlay and is presented to the Royal Academy of Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences of Havana, being elected, on December 14, 1879, as correspondent in the United States of North America of the Academy of Sciences, and maintaining close correspondence with Finlay from then on.
- In 1883 he makes a brief trip to Cuba and marries his cousin Dolores Gener, returning together to the United States.
- In 1884 he is considered among professors of the caliber of the Englishman William Osler to compete for a Chair at the University of Pennsylvania.
- In 1885 he is sent by the Marine Service to Charleston, where he is appointed professor of Pathology and Medical Clinic of the School of Medicine of Charleston.
- In 1889 he is appointed professor of Pathology at the University of Pennsylvania and Pathologist of the Philadelphia hospital, resigning from his positions at the School of Medicine of Charleston and the Marine Hospital Service.

From the United States he also gave valuable contributions to the struggle for Cuba's independence from Spanish colonial rule, as evidenced in various documents written in his own hand, which are preserved in the Cuban National Archive. After having devoted his effort to that cause from emigration, he joined the U.S. Army at the beginning of the Spanish-Cuban-American War and was on the battlefield.

After the war ended, he settled definitively in Havana and devoted himself entirely to official sanitary actions on the Island.

In 1900 he was appointed professor of General Pathology and Intertropical Pathology at the University of Havana, a chair created at his request and the first of its kind on this subject established in America.

With the Republic established, he held the positions of President of the Commission on Infectious Diseases and Director of Public Health, until on May 20, 1921 President Alfredo Zayas gave him the task of serving as Secretary of Public Health and Welfare, which had been created in 1909 and was the first ministry of this type at the world level. On February 8, 1903 the Academy of Sciences had elected him Full Member.

In the long struggle maintained by doctor Carlos J. Finlay Barrés in favor of the acceptance of his doctrine about the agent transmitting yellow fever, Guiteras was one of his most admirable collaborators and put his profound knowledge on the matter at the service of clarifying the scientific truth stated by the Cuban sage.

Other aspects of his sanitary activities were his campaigns to combat and eradicate the bubonic plague in the two outbreaks that arose in Cuba, his efforts in the fight against malaria and his civic conduct in denouncing unsanitary immigration as the determining cause of the spread of this scourge, his precautions in the face of the threat of cholera, by traveling in person to New York, to prevent the epidemic of this disease that was ravaging the United States from reaching the island; and his struggles against foci of hookworm disease, epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis and the great pandemic of influenza of 1918-1919, in which he lost his daughter at the very moment when she was about to become a mother.

Among his many outstanding works in the scientific field, is the creation, together with doctor Emilio Martínez Martínez, of the Tropical Medicine Journal, the first on the subject founded in America and the second in the world, from whose pages he demonstrated for the first time the existence in Cuba of cases of hookworm disease, venereal granuloma and tropical phagedenism.

In the midst of his numerous official, scientific and teaching duties, he found time to conduct special studies outside Cuba and participate in several international congresses and conventions. As to the latter, his participation, with doctor Finlay, as representative of Cuba at the First International Sanitary Convention of the American Republics, held in Washington from December 2 to 5, 1902, deserves a separate paragraph.

On the same day of the inauguration of that event, the International Sanitary Office was established, which was the beginning of the Pan American Health Organization, and its executive council was elected, with him as a member. Besides being one of its founders he was one of its most important leaders.

At the II International Sanitary Convention, which also took place in Washington from October 9 to 14, 1905 and where he was re-elected as a member, he participated in the discussion and approval of the First Pan American Sanitary Code. At the III Convention, held in Mexico City between December 2 and 7, 1907, he was one of the vice presidents of the event and the president of the Yellow Fever Commission, as well as a member of the committee on Trachoma, Beri-Beri and cerebrospinal meningitis. In this one and in the subsequent conventions he was re-elected as a member of the office, until 1921 when he took the position of Secretary of Public Health and Welfare in Cuba.

Dr. Guiteras belonged to several scientific institutions, was Vice President of the Association of Public Health Chiefs of North America and of the American Public Association, honorary member and founder of the Association of American Physicians, of the Medical College of Philadelphia, of the American Society of Tropical Medicine, of the Medical Association of Puerto Rico, of the Academy of Medicine of Caracas and of the American Medical Association.

In Cuba, in addition to the Academy of Sciences, he was part of the Society of Clinical Studies of Havana and other institutions. In 1921 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Tropical Medicine at the University of Havana. At the inaugural act of the establishment of the Medical Federation of Cuba, held at the "Payret" Theater in Havana on October 24, 1925, he was the first of the Cuban physicians who took before his colleagues the oath of that organization, so carefully maintained by the majority of its members until its disappearance.

This was his last professional performance, for although at that assembly they elected him first President of the Medical Federation of Cuba, and he expressed his willingness to fight to raise the prestige of Cuban medicine, the serious heart condition he suffered caused his death four days later.

His figure is representative of the political, scientific and social history of Cuba. He stood out as a patriot for the unprecedented fact of having abandoned his position as full professor at the University of Pennsylvania to serve his country and face with authority any difficulty that affected its sanitary stability. With great firmness he always kept high the prestige of Cuba's scientific institutions and the concept of its sovereignty. As a hygienist he is among the most notable of all times in the world and was an irreproachable citizen, whose life as such can be summed up in his last words at the Assembly of the Medical Federation of Cuba: "The truth shall set you free."