Medicine also suffered the stagnation caused by the victory of Franco’s regime. The parasitologist and congressman of the Republican parliament Gustavo Pittaluga was the first to describe the endemic variant of leishmaniosis in Spain and who devoted his life to the study of the epidemics of cholera, malaria, and other infectious diseases. After the Spanish Civil War he exiled to Cuba and rejected Franco’s request to return to Spain. He founded the journal Archivos de Cardiología y Hematología together with Dr. Luis Calandre Ibáñez, to whom we owe the introduction of modern cardiology techniques to Spain. During the war he was responsible of the Hospital de Carabineros, and as a consequence he was sent to prison for six years and one day by Franco’s regime and disqualified by the School of Physicians for six years. As a histologist, he was also director of the laboratory of microscopic anatomy of the Residencia de Estudiantes and contributed remarkably to the study of the structure of the heart.
Medicina en la contienda
