CARLOS CHAGAS (Brazil)

CARLOS JUSTINIANO RIBEIRO CHAGAS (1879-1934)

Brazilian physician who identified Trypanosoma cruzi as the casuative agent of American trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease) in 1909, while working at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de janeiro.

Chagas’ legacy is unparalleled in the history of medicine - it is the only occasion in which an individual investigator has described the infection, its agent, its vector, its manifestations, its epidemiology, and some of the hosts of the pathogenic genus.

In 1912 Carlos Chagas received the Schaudinn Price, awarded every four years for the best work in the field of protozoology and tropical medicine in the world, by the "Institut für Schiffs und Tropenhygiene" in Hamburg (Germany). Up to then this honor had only been conferred to von Prowazek (1875–1915), eminent Austrian bacteriologist.

He was granted the Great Prize of the Pasteur Centenary Commemorative Exposition in Strasbourg (France) in 1922. In 1921 Chagas became the first Brazilian to be honored with the title of doctor honoris causa by Harvard University (USA), and later by the University of Paris (France).

He was several times nominated for the Nobel Prize - in 1913 and in 1921 and in two more occasions (according to some references), but never received the award. The reasons for this failure are probably related to the fierce political opposition that Chagas faced in Brazil.

Carlos Chagas headed the Oswaldo Cruz Institute after the death of its founder (1917) until his own death; and from 1920 until 1926 he also directed the Brazilian Department of Public Health.

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LUIS MORQUIO (Uruguay)

LUIS MORQUIO (1867–1935)

Uruguayan physician and paediatrician.
He is considered the father of paediatrics in Uruguay and the greatest personality of South American paediatrics.

Luis Morquio qualified in medicine from the University of Montevideo in 1892.
In the following year he began a medical training in Paris. He specialised in paediatrics at Jacques-Joseph Grancher's clinic for sick children.
Morquio also studied at the Pasteur Institute.

In 1894 he returned to Uruguay, where he opened practice as a paediatrician and became professor of paediatrics in Montevideo.

He is remembered for Morquio syndrome, a lysosomal disorder also known as "mucopolysaccharidosis type IV". The condition was first described, simultaneously and independently, in 1929, by Luis Morquio in Montevideo, and by James F. Brailsford in England.

Morquio was a founder of the Sociedad Uruguaya de Pediatría in 1915.
The French government conferred upon him the rank of officer of the Légion d'Honneur.

In 1930 he was appointed director of the Clínica Pediátrica y Puericultura (the Institute of Clinical Pediatrics) in Montevideo.

Morquio wrote many publications in the field of pathology and hygiene of paediatrics, and two paediatric textbooks.

A bust was erected in his honour at the Institute of Paediatrics, in Montevideo, after his death in 1935.


SEE POSTAGE STAMPS ON MORQUIO

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MANUEL E. PATARROYO (Colombia)

MANUEL ELKIN PATARROYO (born 1947)

Colombian physician who developed the world’s first synthetic vaccine for malaria.

He graduated from the National University of Colombia, received a scholarship to Yale University (USA), and later received his PhD from Rockefeller University in New York.

Dr. Patarroyo donated the patent for his vaccine to the World Health Organization in 1995.

He founded the Institute of Immunology in Bogotá in 1972.

Dr. Manuel E. Patarroyo holds more than 21 honor doctorates from many universities around the world, and has received many prestigious awards including the “Prince of Asturias Prize”.

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