Rafael Estrada González

He was one of the pioneers of clinical neurology on the island of Cuba. His orientation toward pathology of the central nervous system and the group of neuromuscular diseases was very precocious.

He was born in the city of La Habana where he completed his primary and secondary studies. After finishing his high school diploma at the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza de La Habana, he enrolled in the School of Medicine at the Universidad Nacional, where he graduated as the top student in 1946.

During this formative period of the 1940s, neurological patients were dispersed among clinics dedicated to Internal Medicine, Neurosurgery, and Neuropsychiatry, without there being sufficient concentration of efforts that would allow their development as Clinical Neurology. Professor Estrada dedicated his entire life to this endeavor. Proof of this is that until his last days before dying at age 69, he remained active in all his responsibilities.

He was a precursor in Cuba of diagnostic and treatment techniques for epilepsy. The autopsy protocols, with his contributions in neuropathological observations, and the magnificent descriptions and drawings he created, constitute a monumental work of his work in the field of Neuropathology.

Professor Estrada was the author of several monographs and pamphlets of the specialty, among which his formidable work on Polyradiculoneuritis and Neuroplasticity stands out. He published more than one hundred articles in national and foreign journals and left at his death a large number of unpublished manuscripts.

The descriptive synthesis of his curriculum vitae could well correspond to that of a man of the Renaissance. He was a physician of vast universal culture, who united to his scientific knowledge a humanist education enhanced by the passionate practice of his profession.

He taught with pedagogical mastery and high scientific level to his disciples, to whom he served as guide and stimulus to lead them along the path of the fruits of his long experience.

Above all, he was an integral physician, then a specialist, always a scientist, an excellent human being of fine character.

Master and creator of the "Cuban Neurological School," to which he devoted his life and under whose orientation and direction all the specialists who work in the different areas of neurosciences in Cuba were trained, educated in the harmony that must exist between medical care, teaching, and research.

His book Functional Neuroanatomy, written in co-authorship with Professor Jesús Pérez, was first published in 1969 and has had three editions and six reprints, the last in 2005, which undoubtedly is good evidence for a specialized book and speaks favorably of the acceptance it has had among readers. This text has more than fulfilled the declared interest of its authors in the prologue "to achieve a necessary work, as well as an agreeable one."

In 1976 he published another book, Acute Polyradiculoneuritis of Unknown Cause (Landry-Guillain-Barré-Strohl Syndrome), the first in the country to address Neuroplasticity and wrote an interesting pamphlet on the subject. He also was concerned with the high prevalence of hereditary ataxias in the province of Holguín.

In his constant interest in transmitting knowledge in an engaging and understandable way, he founded in the 1970s the Bulletin of Neurology and Neurosurgery. Years later in 1988, he coordinated the book Topics in Neurology for Medical Practice, Volume I, where several professors reported their experiences. In the presentation Estrada wrote: "we want to achieve objectivity, simplicity, and timeliness in the thematic approach to avoid schematism and oversimplification." His intention was to publish other volumes, an idea that ultimately did not materialize. The articles of the illustrious neuroscientist appeared in multiple journals.

In Cuba he published in the Bulletin of Neurology and Neurosurgery, in the Cuban Journals of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Medicine, Biomedical Research and Surgery, and abroad in the Journal of Neurology of Spain, Excerpta Medica, J Neurol Sci and Acta Neuropathol, to name only a few.

An aficionado of baseball, he was a supporter of the Industriales; however, more than once I heard him at the end of the change of shift, congratulate followers of another team for the game won the night before.

His students will admire him forever for his elevated scientific knowledge, for his pedagogical mastery and above all for the affection he was able to win from students and patients.

Between 1948 and 1950 he remained at Massachussets General Hospital of Harvard University in Boston, where he completed his specialization studies in Neurology with Professor Charles A. Kubik in the Neuropathology Laboratory of that chair, where he also demonstrated his drawing abilities. Many of the illustrations of histological slides in texts and pamphlets by Professor Kubik were created by Doctor Estrada.

Upon his return to Cuba, he developed great clinical, teaching, and research activity in that branch of medicine that so fascinated him. In the 1950s, he gave sustained impetus to Neurology, with great dedication to clinical practice and complementary techniques, precise for the diagnosis of nervous system disorders.

In 1960 he became a professor at the School of Medicine of the Universidad de La Habana in the subject of Neuroanatomy, on which he wrote a formidable text for its study, still in use in our study plans.

In 1962 he became director of the Neurological Hospital, founded on January 29 of that year, where he laid the foundations for developing all activities of neurological sciences. That institution regrouped the scarce human and material resources that existed then and came to become the embryo of future teaching, clinical, research, preventive, and rehabilitation development in the field of Neurology and Neurosurgery in Cuba. On November 25, 1966, the Institute of Neurology was officially inaugurated in the city of La Habana, where he continued to be its director until his death, as befitted a figure who already enjoyed prestige in that specialty. Previously he had created the chair of Functional Neuroanatomy and carried out the pioneering work of an incipient electromyography laboratory.

In the scientific and academic order he treasured the highest honors: Doctor in Medical Sciences, Specialist of Second Degree in Neurology, Full Professor, Principal Investigator, but what characterized him most were his simplicity and his modesty.

The last days of his life he spent in the Neurological Hospital, there next to his own office they had enabled a room where he rested a bit, received his medications, and continued working.

With the modesty and simplicity of those who are worthy, Professor Estrada will always be testimony to creative capacity and unwavering will to achieve a noble purpose.

In his life there was always room for love, fidelity, loyalty, conviction, and hope.

His style and his school were characterized by a tendency toward the objective, the development of his practical sense before the patient, the meticulousness in semiological assessment, and the insistence on early diagnosis.