History of Latin American Dermatology

JULIO CORREAto the pretensions of the Municipal Council and of the bishop in the sense of investing theHospital’s income in the creation of a University or Convictorium run by the Jesuits 8 .The last years of the Colony were, on the other hand, very profitable for nationalhealth. The economic prosperity attracted various European physicians; others arrivedwith the parties carrying out the border demarcation between Spanish and Portuguesepossessions. Surgeons with university degrees introduced modern ideas about anatomy,pathology and clinical diagnosis to Paraguay; they identified infant tetanus, acute exanthemata,intermittent fevers, syphilis, pulmonary tuberculosis, epidemic conjunctivitis,dysenteries and murine typhus. They were also the first to use forceps and to carry outrisky surgical procedures. The practice of medicine became regularized in those years.The Congress of 1844 provided for the hiring of foreign professors and the sending ofyoung Paraguayans abroad to study medicine, surgery and obstetrics. These physicianshired by the state, who were mainly English, set up the military health service and in1858 formed a School of Surgery headquartered at the Potrero Hospital. The 1865-1870war put an end to this, our first official medical school, when all its members enteredarmy ranks 8 .Beginning in 1870, medicine was enlivened by the contribution of numerous Europeanphysicians who came to heroic Paraguay more in the search for adventure than forfortune. The State, lacking resources, was unable to carry out social work, and limiteditself to sketching out a new sanitary organization. At this time, the Council of Medicineand Public Hygiene, the Conservatory of Vaccines, the Charity Hospital and other suchinstitutions were founded at this time, with a greater capital of laudable aims than ofeconomic means of subsistence.The year 1890 marked a new era, with two transcendental events: the emergence ofthe first Paraguayan physicians and the founding of the National University of Asunción.The first Paraguayan doctors graduated in Buenos Aires and Montevideo; on their returnto the fatherland, thanks to the support lent by various Spanish professors, they renderedthe opening of a Medical School possible. This first School had an ephemeral existencesince it dissolved midway through 1891, due to a lack of students; it wasreactivated in 1898 to produce, years later, the first graduating class of native-bornphysicians.And thus we arrive at the twentieth century, when medicine rapidly progressed untilachieving its present status. The Charity Hospital, inaugurated in 1894, was nationalizedin 1925, and in 1927 became a dependency of the School of Medical Sciences. The latter,shut down in 1912 and opened for a third time in 1918, was reorganized and improvedwith the cooperation of illustrious professors hired in Europe. The point of departure ofthe academic phase of our medicine can be established in 1927. On that date the hiringof instructors by the hospital began a fruitful period that reaches the present day 8 .■ Historical summary of the ParaguayanSociety of DermatologyHistorical summary of the Chair of Dermatology and the Paraguayan Society of DermatologyWe will refer here to the events that laid the foundation for the first organizational andworking structures of the Chair and of the Paraguayan Society of Dermatology (Figure 2).It is worth mentioning — to return to the depths of time, as it were — the physiciansof the courageous youth that decided to found the Society of Dermatology, Siphilology andLeprology of Paraguay, as it was initially known. In this section we reproduce the foundingCharter of the Society of Paraguay (Figure 3) and we remember the list of those whosigned the document, with the exception that there could be involuntary omissionsdue to missing papers. Its founding partners were Drs. Amelia Aguirre, Roque Ávila,Atilio Báez Giangreco, Francisco Benza, Guillermo Brañas, Virgilio Caballero Garay,296