Cámara-Milán P

Language: Spanish
References: 0
Page: 207-212
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ABSTRACT

Dr. Hideyo Noguchi was born in the city of Wakamatsu, Japan on November 24, 1876. He studied medicine at the Imperial University in Tokyo and graduated in 1898. Under the guidance of Profesor Kitasato, he occupied the post of assistant Professor at the Institute of Infectious Diseases. Later he was in charge of quarentine in Yokohama and the professor of general pathology at the Tokyo Dental School. In 1900, he travelled to the United States of America and joined the University of Pensylvania, and became assistant Doctor at the School of Medicine and at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, where he isolated toxic substances (haemolisine, aglutinine, neurotoxins and proteolytic enzymes) from the poison of several species of america snakes, thereby achieving the application of specific sera in cases of ophidian poisoning. In 1903, he carried out studies of Biology and Bacteriology and graduated from the Institute of Serotherapy of the State of Copenhagen in Denmark. In 1904, Doctor Simon Flexner, Chief of the Laboratories of the Rockefeller Institute in New York, invited him to join him, where he advanced from assistant to member, to associated member to titled member of this Institute. While he was there, he made his well-known modification to the reaction of Wasserman. In 1912, he discovered the treponema Palidum of Syphilis in the brain of a dead patient who had died from general paralysis, thereby confirming the etiological theory of that form of brain disease.
From 1918, Dr. Noguchi dedicated himself to the study of yellow fever and in 1920, the Rockefeller Institute sent Dr. Noguchi to the Laboratories of the Hospital O'Horan, Merida, Yucatan to study this disease. The School of Medicine in Merida, were honoured to receive such a great doctor in this city and they paid tribute to him by designating him Doctor in Medicine and surgery Honoris Causa, the night of January 17, 1920. After several weeks of intense work, he lost interest in staying in Merida, Yucatan since the epidemic was nearing its end, and doctor Noguchi left for the Rockefeller Institute. Later, he went to the gold coast, Western Africa, where an epidemic of yellow fever had broken out. In May 1928, just before leaving for New York, he became ill and a few days later, Dr. Hideyo Noguchi died of yellow fever at the age of 51.