Monument to Carlos Finlay Panama City
by James Brunker
Title
Monument to Carlos Finlay Panama City
Artist
James Brunker
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
This monument to Carlos Juan Finlay (1833 - 1915) is one of several in Plaza Francia in Casco Viejo, the historic old quarter of Panama City. Finlay was a Cuban epidemiologist who was a pioneer in the research of yellow fever; he was the first person to suggest that the disease was transmitted by mosquitos, a theory he presented at the 1881 International Sanitary Conference. A year later he identified the Aedes aegypti mosquito as the transmitter, his work led to controls of the mosquito population being widely used to reduce the spread of the disease. His work had a big impact on the construction of the Panama Canal, the Americans ran health campaigns before and during construction in the early 1900s that greatly reduced the incidence of the disease. Yellow fever had killed tens of thousands of workers during the earlier French attempts to build the Canal in the 1880s, a significant factor in the eventual failure of those efforts.
Finlay went on to become the chief health officer of Cuba from 1902 to 1909, was nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (though he never received the prize) and was awarded the National Order of the Legion of Honour of France in 1908. He died in Havana, Cuba in 1915.
Photograph © James Brunker. Reproduction, transmission or publication in any form without prior written permission strictly prohibited.
Uploaded
November 12th, 2022
Statistics
Viewed 228 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 04/19/2024 at 11:42 AM
Embed
Share
Sales Sheet
Comments
There are no comments for Monument to Carlos Finlay Panama City. Click here to post the first comment.