History of Latin American Dermatology

History of Dermatology in Colombiathe historian Groot “it caused the death of four fifths of the Indians of the savanna”; archobishops,priests, clergymen, mayors, noblemen, plebeians and slaves died equally.This epidemic was known as the “the plague of Santos Gil,” after the name of the notarywho wrote out most of the wills of the dying noblemen, who donated all their wealth tohim in the face of the death of all their descendants because of the same plague 2 .Physicians, hospitals and chairs in MedicineThe first licensed physician who arrived in Santa Fe was Don Álvaro de Aunón in1579, and the first locally-born inhabitant who graduated in Spain was Don Juan Lópezin 1584.St. Peter’s Hospital, in Santa Fe, opened its doors in 1569, after Bishop Friar Juan delos Barrios y Toledo donated one of his houses in 1564 for the purpose of founding “ahospital in which the poor who come to this city and who exist in it, be they Spaniardsor natives, may live and shelter and be healed.” In 1635, the management of the hospitalwas entrusted to the Order of Hospitalers of St. John of God; it was called Hospital ofJesus, Mary and Joseph, although it has been known since then as the St. John of GodHospital 16 . During the Colony, 25 hospitals were created, among others that of St. Sebastianin Cartagena, that of Popayán in 1577, that of Honda in 1600 and in 1789 thatof St. Gil (Leprosarium); the first apothecary’s shop to exist in Santa Fe was that of PedroLópez de Buiza, in 1630.During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was practically no medicalteaching; the few physicians served royalty and colonial officials exclusively; the firstchairs in medicine, at the Higher School of St. Bartholomew in 1641 and the HigherSchool of the Rosary, in Santa Fe, were closed down for lack of students, owing in partto “the profession of physician being considered unworthy and only suitable for peopleof low social standing” 9 and also because Spaniards were forbidden to study outsidetheir country.At the beginning of the eighteenth century, with the attainment of the Spanish Crownby the Bourbons, medical studies were reborn in Spain, and in consequence also in itscolonies; thus, the chair of medicine was consolidated in 1753 with José Vicente RománCancino, at St. Thomas University, where its first physician, Juan Bautista de VargasUribe, graduated in 1764. In 1760 José Celestino Mutis returned from Spain bringingwith him the ideas of the Enlightenment; on their basis he disseminated thesmallpox vaccine and the construction of cemeteries outside cities, tracing thefirst steps in public-health medicine in the country; he “discovered” the quiniaancestrally used by the Indians, and as a medical educator he trained Miguelde la Isla as a disciple, who was to be the founder of the first Medical School inSanta Fe (1802) (Figure 3).Juan Gualberto Gutiérrez, a physician and attorney, in 1810 handled theasylum for virulent patients and on August 5, 1819, treated ill soldiers two daysbefore the battle of the Bridge of Boyacá, which gained freedom for Colombia;he was at the bedside of the national hero Antonio Nariño in his death throes,keeping a record until the moment of death in his diary, which is preserved atthe Nariño House Museum in Villa de Leyva 12 .The difficulties generated by the wars of Independence in the first decadesof the nineteenth century caused medical teaching to virtually disappear fromthe country. Malnutrition, the lack of basic services and of sanitation measuresdetermined a high morbidity and mortality in that century 16 . There were several epidemicsof yellow fever, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, measles, bartonellosis, parasitoses,typhoid fever and exanthematic typhus. It was recommended that people “be incontact with the people and gradually vaccinate themselves with the infected waters,Figure 3.Miguel de laIsla117