Historia de la medicina chilena: ¿Cómo, dónde y cuándo habría nacido la cirugía moderna chilena? / ¿How, where and when modern chilean surgery would have been born?

ABSTRACT

The challenge of knowing the events surrounding the modern origins of the different specialties of Chilean medicine should be of interest to the specialists of these specialties. Thus, in the case of surgery, fortunately in Chile there are testimonial documents, which reviewed and analyzed can suggest this question, mentioning the one who today is considered the world father of modern surgery, whose important surgical teachings were delivered to Chilean disciples who introduced it in our country. In the context of the War of the Pacific, in the year 1879, a "blood hospital" was built in Santiago, donated by Domingo Matte, a Chilean politician, to receive the many war wounded who were transported from the north. It was Dr. Manuel Barros Borgoño, a young surgeon recently graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, with a degree revalidated in Chile, who in 1880 took charge of this hospital, and together with his team, began to apply his experience in listerian methods learned in Paris from his teacher Dr. Just Lucas Champonniere. Just Lucas Champonniere, giving beginning to the Chilean antiseptic surgery, managing to reduce the mortality of surgeries to 3%, compared to 80% of other Chilean hospitals that refused to change, and continued with the use of sponge soaked in cerato (lard).