History of Latin American Dermatology

CÉSAR IVÁN VARELA HERNÁNDEZFigure 4.Antonio VargasReyeswith the dirty rinds of fruit...” 17 . Leprosy and malaria were some of the century’s mainproblems.With the Republic, launched in 1810, modern medicine also arose in Colombia.The history of the medical schools began with that of the National University ofColombia, in March 1826, when General Francisco de Paula Santander issued the lawthat organized the Central University of the Republic, first governmental manifestationof the public university. In 1864, Antonio Vargas Reyes founded a medical school of a privatenature in Bogotá, while José María Samper submitted a bill to the national Congressfor a National University of the United States of Colombia — inspired in that of Santander— which was to be created three years later, in 1867, under the government of SantosAcosta. The Vargas Reyes medical school and the St. John of God Hospital wereincorporated into it 18 . Around that time, some physicians studied under the tutorshipof their teachers and others abroad, particularly in Paris. In 1850, thedoors were opened to empiricism and charlatanism when the practice ofmedicine without a license was authorized by law. The medical leaders of thetime included Antonio Vargas Reyes (Figure 4), who gave a masterly descriptionof yellow fever and is regarded as the father of surgery in Colombia 16, 19 . Regardingthe medicine of the period, the most outstanding figure in Medellín,Manuel Uribe Ángel, wrote in 1881: “I believe we killed not a few unfortunateswith that precarious and deplorable medicine. God forgive us the harm done inthe attempt.”At that time there began the development of hospital medicine according tothe French school. At the end of the nineteenth century medicine flourished,with Epifanio Combariza, the chair of bacteriology, who, added to laboratorymedicine, micrography and syphilography, would give rise to Dermatology.Teaching of this specialized field began at the National University in 1886 withGabriel José Castañeda as first professor.In the twentieth century, with the development of the United States of America, wherethe great modern medical mindsets — the physiopathological, the etiopathological andthe anatomo-clinical — were brought together with research and technology, these displacedthe influence of the French school on Colombian medicine 16 . Laboratorymedicine was strengthened, the new surgical techniques and pharmacology arrived, andthus, since 1910, with José Ignacio Uribe at the National University of Colombia, Dermatologyacquired the nature of a true specialized field 18 .In 1930 the Labor, Hygiene and Welfare Ministry was created, with departments forthe struggle against leprosy, venereal diseases and tuberculosis. In 1946 the HygieneMinistry was created; later, medical schools were founded in Cali, Popayán and Manizales.Specialization programs and medical residences were launched and associations ofmedical specialists created. In the last decades of the twentieth century, the fast developmentof genetics, molecular biology, immunology, pharmacology and systematizedtechnology led to the opening and evolution of all fields of research in Dermatology, seeingextraordinary progress.Forerunners and pioneers of Dermatology up to the year 1970A knowledge of history allows us to exercise the legacy ofour forerunners and pioneers with enthusiasm and dignity.Those who left us their inheritance in the nineteenth century included Ricardo de laParra, author of The Elephantiasis of the Greeks and its True Nature (1838); Juan de DiosTavera, who in his Study of Leprosy recommended its treatment with chalmugra oil (leprol);José Joaquín García (1842); Marcelino S. Vargas was convinced that leprosy, which118