Ramón Carrillo
Encyclopedia
Ramón Carrillo was an Argentine
neurosurgeon
, neurobiologist, and public health physician born in Santiago del Estero
.
Between 1930 and 1945 he contributed valuable original research about the brain
cells which are not neurons—named glial cell
s—and the method for staining and observing them under the microscope
, as well as on their evolutionary origin (phylogeny), and the comparative anatomy
of the brain across the several classes of vertebrate
s. In the same period Ramón Carrillo contributed novel techniques for neurological
diagnosis: he refined iodine-contrasted ventriculography, called iodoventriculography, and discovered signs in it for several diseases; developed tomography, which by lack of electronic means at the time was prevented from integrating computation yet was a precursor of what is today known as computerized tomography
; and achieved its combination with electroencephalogram
(EEG), termed tomoencephalography.
Still in the same period, Carrillo attained valuable results investigating the brain herniations protruding into blood cysterns (cysternal herniations) and the syndrome
s occurring after a closed brain traumatism or contussion (postcommotional syndromes); he discovered the "Carrillo's disease" or epidemic acute papillitis; described in detail the cerebral scleroses, during whose investigation he performed many cerebral transplantations (brain grafts
) between living rabbits; and histologically
reclassified the cerebral tumor
s and the inflammations of the innermost brain envelope (arachnoid mater
), which inflammations are called arachnoiditis. He also proposed a widely used, pre-DSM
"Classification of mental diseases." At the age of 36 (1942), by opposition concourse he became the University of Buenos Aires Chair of Neurosurgery.
) with whose leader Ramón Carrillo had made friends only during the last two and a half years, in 1946 he moved to confront the causes of diseases with the public power now at his disposal. In this way Carrillo later became the first Minister of Public Health of the Argentine Republic
. During eight years he developed an innovative and highly valuable contribution, but quit in July 1954, more than a year before than Juan Domingo Perón's second term become ended with a coup d'état
(September 16, 1955. In spite of his long disconnection, he was to remain outside of the country, first in the United States and then in Brazil.
Exiled, seriously ill (insufficiently treated hypertension), politically chased (the Argentine government which ousted Peron presented a formal protest to the Brazilian government which had provided some medical help to Carrillo, labeling him as a "malingerer"; his books and pictures in Buenos Aires were sacked) and suffering grievous poverty with his wife and little children, Ramon Carrillo died in Belém
do Pará, Brazil (December 20, 1956). Circumstances notwithstanding, during this year he still produced works on philosophical anthropology. Defamed by them as a "gasoline robber", his figure and accomplishments were silenced until Perón's brief third presidential period (1973-1974).
In this stage Carrillo was recognized, although only as architect and achiever of a National Health system carefully designed and carried out. His name was then imparted to numerous Argentine hospitals and institutions related to public health. It is frequently ascribed to the embarrassment produced by Carrillo's model in less competent politicians the fact that, afterwards, his biography, ideas, and contributions to science remained generally unknown, except by outlines in the neurobiological tradition in which Carrillo took part. The large skeletons for several hospitals that he left behind without completion never became finished, and were demolished during this period even as late as 2004. In 2005 his brother Arturo Carrillo, still in hardship and without any official funding, completed a book expounding the magnitude of his achievements and sacrifices. It triggered that, by Executive Order 1558 dated Dec. 9, 2005, the Argentine government decreed the full year 2006 as "Year of Honor to Ramón Carrillo". Many events were carried out to make amends for the previous injustices and the ideas of social medicine steering his work became republished.
to start a career in Medicine
. He did it brilliantly, studying with Christfried Jakob among others, and graduated in 1929 with the Gold Medal for the best student.
After this he showed a preference for neurology
and neurosurgery
, collaborating with eminent neurosurgeon Manuel Balado, a Mayo alumnus and also a disciple of Christfried Jakob. Under Balado, Carrillo published his initial scientífic articles. After graduation he obtained a travel grant in order to further his studies in Europe
, where he worked in the best neuroscience laboratories, Cornelius Ariens Kappers's and the Vogts' among them.
He returned to Buenos Aires
in the middle years of what historian José Luis Torres labeled "The Infamous Decade". In it, Carrillo witnessed what has been described as the "systematic sacking and destruction of his fatherland, a period characterized by the leaders' deep moral decadence, in which self-imposed corruption, economic felonies, the selling out of the national patrimony, and the impoverishment of the population's majority" (Ordóñez). Thus disillusioned – because of the "Infamous Decade's" mismanagement – of the socio-cultural proposals of the liberal, American-style democratic system, and explicitly rejecting both its nazifascist
and stalinist
alternatives, Carrillo adhered to the locally rising nationalist thought. Looking forward to a re-moralizing revolution, he complemented his scientific formation with evolving political ideas and cultural education. He reinforced his close relationship with his former companion of elementary school Homero Manzi
, as well as Arturo Jauretche, Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz, and tango
and theater composers Armando Discepolo y Enrique Santos Discépolo
, representatives of tango culture and the new nationalistic ideas; and the Argentine-German neurobiological tradition active at the neuropsychiatric hospitals later known by the names of two disciples of Christfried Jakob, Drs. Borda and Moyano. In 1937 Ramon Carrillo suffered an acute illness, the sequel of whose fever was hypertension and progressively severe headaches. He barely saved his life through the devoted efforts of his lifetime friend Salomón Chichilnisky, a medical doctor and literary author who started life carrying loads in the docks in the port of Buenos Aires to support his parents, brothers and sisters and, against all odds, became a Chaired Professor of neurology, then acting in the level of Secretary of Health helped minister Carrillo to build many public hospitals in Argentina, and later died in one of them.
During those years Ramón Carrillo exclusively dedicated himself to research and teaching, until becoming Head (1939) of the Neurology and Neurosurgery Service in the Argentinian Military Central Hospital. This position in Buenos Aires afforded him deep acquaintance with the real situation of the country's health. He became well informed on the clinical files of all the young men examined for enrolment into the military service, coming from the whole of Argentina
, and became aware of the high prevalence of poverty-linked diseases, specially in the candidates from the poorest provinces. He carried out statistical studies showing that the country only had 45% of the required hospital beds, moreover unevenly distributed, with regions falling to 0,00% of beds for every thousand inhabitants. He thus ratified the recollections and images from his own province, evincing the state of neglect of the majority of the country.
Doubly employed because of salary needs (he was still single, but helped his mother and ten younger brother and sisters, caring for all of them to have a career), in 1942 Carrillo obtained by opposition the Chair of Neurosurgery of the Medicine Faculty. There he formed a squad of talented disciples, among them German Dickmann, Raúl Matera, D. E. Nijensohn, Raúl Carrea, Fernando Knesevich, Lorenzo Amezúa, Jorge Cohen, Jacobo and Leon Zimman, Rogelio Driollet Laspiur, Juan C. Christensen and Alberto D. Kaplan. His scientific and academic career was brilliant. Nevertheless, his life was to radically change. Great transformations were occurring in the country. In 1943 president Castillo was overthrown and another military government took on. In these circumstances, in the Hospital Militar Carrillo became acquainted with colonel Juan Domingo Perón, a patient with whom Carrillo shared long talks. The colonel was precisely who persuaded Ramón Carrillo of collaborating in planifying the national health polítics. Soon afterwards Carrillo, at age 39, briefly served as Dean of the Medicine Faculty, acting as a go-between in a fierce, highly politized, Left-Right university conflict. For early 1946, both sides were resenting him, forcing him to quit office.
By then colonel Perón democratically obtained the nation's presidence, confirming Carrillo as head of the State Secretary of Public Health, later Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance of the country. Besides Chichilnisky, Ramón Carrillo wanted to be assisted by his close friend and companion medical student the neuroscientist Braulio Moyano, another of the ablest disciples of Christfried Jakob, yet Moyano felt himself unable to serve society from such a role and preferred remaining as a neurobiologist. Who to this end left science and moved from the today Borda Hospital was, instead, Santiago Carrillo, a disciple of Moyano and brother of the new minister. Perón's wife, "Evita
", coordinated her political action with Carrillo's, so contributing to his technical achievements.
Ramón Carrillo's action was prolific, hitherto unsurpassed. He increased the number of hospital beds in the country, from 66.300 in 1946 to 132.000 in 1954. He eradicated, in only two years, endemic diseases such as malaria
, by means of highly aggressive campaigns against the vector. Syphilis
and venereal diseases practically vanished. He built 234 free, public hospitals or policlinics, lowered tuberculosis
' mortality rate from 130 per 100.000 to 36 per 100.000, ended epidemics sych as typhus
and brucellosis
, and decreased drastically the infantile mortality rate from 90 to 56 per thousand live births.
All this Ramón Carrillo did while acknowledging priority to the development of preventive medicine, the hospitals' running organization, and concepts such as regulative centralizing and executive decentralizing ("centralización normativa y descentralización ejecutiva"). The later differs from the decentralizing with merely economic goals imposed by the markets. Corresponding by letter with Norbert Wiener
, the so-called "creator of cybernetics", Ramón Carrillo applied it to the art of government with the name of cybernology (cibernología), creating an Instituto de Cibernología or strategic planning
in 1951.
Numerous authors agree that the most important heritage bestowed by Ramón Carrillo were the ideas, principles, and grounding motives which accompanied his deeds. "The problems of Medicine
as a branch of the State cannot be resolved while sanitary politics is not backed by a social politics. Similarly, there cannot be a social politics without an economy organized to benefit the greater part of the population." "In the field of health, the scientific achievements only are useful when they get at the reach of the whole population." These sentences portray a personality capable to abandon his admirable scientific career, internationally recognized, in order to fully devote himself to the concrete needs of his people.
Ordóñez writes: "He died in Belém do Pará
, North Brazil
, on 20 December 1956, at his age of fifty, poverty-stricken, ailing and exiled, receiving money by mail from his friend Salomón Chichilnisky exactly as San Martín
did from his friend Aguado. Perhaps thinking, as libertador
Simón Bolívar
did, that he has been tilling the sea ... Maybe one of his better known sentences indicates that his work remains unfinished: 'Facing the diseases generated by poverty, facing the peoples' sadness, wretchedness, and social tribulation, the microbes inasmuch as causes of disease only are secondary causes.' "
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
neurosurgeon
Neurosurgery
Neurosurgery is the medical specialty concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spine, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and extra-cranial cerebrovascular system.-In the United States:In...
, neurobiologist, and public health physician born in Santiago del Estero
Santiago del Estero
Santiago del Estero is the capital of Santiago del Estero Province in northern Argentina. It has a population of 244,733 inhabitants, making it the twelfth largest city in the country, with a surface area of 2,116 km². It lies on the Dulce River and on National Route 9, at a distance of...
.
Career in neurosurgery and neurobiology
Brain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
cells which are not neurons—named glial cell
Glial cell
Glial cells, sometimes called neuroglia or simply glia , are non-neuronal cells that maintain homeostasis, form myelin, and provide support and protection for neurons in the brain, and for neurons in other parts of the nervous system such as in the autonomous nervous system...
s—and the method for staining and observing them under the microscope
Microscope
A microscope is an instrument used to see objects that are too small for the naked eye. The science of investigating small objects using such an instrument is called microscopy...
, as well as on their evolutionary origin (phylogeny), and the comparative anatomy
Anatomy
Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...
of the brain across the several classes of vertebrate
Vertebrate
Vertebrates are animals that are members of the subphylum Vertebrata . Vertebrates are the largest group of chordates, with currently about 58,000 species described. Vertebrates include the jawless fishes, bony fishes, sharks and rays, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds...
s. In the same period Ramón Carrillo contributed novel techniques for neurological
Neurology
Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...
diagnosis: he refined iodine-contrasted ventriculography, called iodoventriculography, and discovered signs in it for several diseases; developed tomography, which by lack of electronic means at the time was prevented from integrating computation yet was a precursor of what is today known as computerized tomography
Tomography
Tomography refers to imaging by sections or sectioning, through the use of any kind of penetrating wave. A device used in tomography is called a tomograph, while the image produced is a tomogram. The method is used in radiology, archaeology, biology, geophysics, oceanography, materials science,...
; and achieved its combination with electroencephalogram
Electroencephalography
Electroencephalography is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp. EEG measures voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain...
(EEG), termed tomoencephalography.
Still in the same period, Carrillo attained valuable results investigating the brain herniations protruding into blood cysterns (cysternal herniations) and the syndrome
Syndrome
In medicine and psychology, a syndrome is the association of several clinically recognizable features, signs , symptoms , phenomena or characteristics that often occur together, so that the presence of one or more features alerts the physician to the possible presence of the others...
s occurring after a closed brain traumatism or contussion (postcommotional syndromes); he discovered the "Carrillo's disease" or epidemic acute papillitis; described in detail the cerebral scleroses, during whose investigation he performed many cerebral transplantations (brain grafts
Medical grafting
Grafting refers to a surgical procedure to move tissue from one site to another on the body, or from another person, without bringing its own blood supply with it. Instead, a new blood supply grows in after it is placed. A similar technique where tissue is transferred with the blood supply intact...
) between living rabbits; and histologically
Histology
Histology is the study of the microscopic anatomy of cells and tissues of plants and animals. It is performed by examining cells and tissues commonly by sectioning and staining; followed by examination under a light microscope or electron microscope...
reclassified the cerebral tumor
Tumor
A tumor or tumour is commonly used as a synonym for a neoplasm that appears enlarged in size. Tumor is not synonymous with cancer...
s and the inflammations of the innermost brain envelope (arachnoid mater
Arachnoid mater
The arachnoid mater, literally from Latin "spider -like mother", is one of the three meninges, the membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord...
), which inflammations are called arachnoiditis. He also proposed a widely used, pre-DSM
DSM
-Business:* DSM , an international life science and performance materials company from the Netherlands* Delhi school of music, a music school in India...
"Classification of mental diseases." At the age of 36 (1942), by opposition concourse he became the University of Buenos Aires Chair of Neurosurgery.
Career in social medicine
Then, in a sudden professional change, Carrillo left his brilliant career as neurobiologist and neurosurgeon and renounced the calm and prestige derived from it, in order to fully devote himself to social medicine, often called sanitarism in Spain and Latin American countries. From this angle he hoped to flesh out his aspirations regarding health. By taking profit of the opportunity allowed by the rise of a certain political party (Peronist PartyJusticialist Party
The Justicialist Party , or PJ, is a Peronist political party in Argentina, and the largest component of the Peronist movement.The party was led by Néstor Kirchner, President of Argentina from 2003 to 2007, until his death on October 27, 2010. The current Argentine president, Cristina Fernández de...
) with whose leader Ramón Carrillo had made friends only during the last two and a half years, in 1946 he moved to confront the causes of diseases with the public power now at his disposal. In this way Carrillo later became the first Minister of Public Health of the Argentine Republic
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. During eight years he developed an innovative and highly valuable contribution, but quit in July 1954, more than a year before than Juan Domingo Perón's second term become ended with a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
(September 16, 1955. In spite of his long disconnection, he was to remain outside of the country, first in the United States and then in Brazil.
Exiled, seriously ill (insufficiently treated hypertension), politically chased (the Argentine government which ousted Peron presented a formal protest to the Brazilian government which had provided some medical help to Carrillo, labeling him as a "malingerer"; his books and pictures in Buenos Aires were sacked) and suffering grievous poverty with his wife and little children, Ramon Carrillo died in Belém
Belém
Belém is a Brazilian city, the capital and largest city of state of Pará, in the country's north region. It is the entrance gate to the Amazon with a busy port, airport and bus/coach station...
do Pará, Brazil (December 20, 1956). Circumstances notwithstanding, during this year he still produced works on philosophical anthropology. Defamed by them as a "gasoline robber", his figure and accomplishments were silenced until Perón's brief third presidential period (1973-1974).
In this stage Carrillo was recognized, although only as architect and achiever of a National Health system carefully designed and carried out. His name was then imparted to numerous Argentine hospitals and institutions related to public health. It is frequently ascribed to the embarrassment produced by Carrillo's model in less competent politicians the fact that, afterwards, his biography, ideas, and contributions to science remained generally unknown, except by outlines in the neurobiological tradition in which Carrillo took part. The large skeletons for several hospitals that he left behind without completion never became finished, and were demolished during this period even as late as 2004. In 2005 his brother Arturo Carrillo, still in hardship and without any official funding, completed a book expounding the magnitude of his achievements and sacrifices. It triggered that, by Executive Order 1558 dated Dec. 9, 2005, the Argentine government decreed the full year 2006 as "Year of Honor to Ramón Carrillo". Many events were carried out to make amends for the previous injustices and the ideas of social medicine steering his work became republished.
Short biography
After attending elementary and middle school in his native city, Ramón Carrillo moved to Buenos AiresBuenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
to start a career in Medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
. He did it brilliantly, studying with Christfried Jakob among others, and graduated in 1929 with the Gold Medal for the best student.
After this he showed a preference for neurology
Neurology
Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...
and neurosurgery
Neurosurgery
Neurosurgery is the medical specialty concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spine, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and extra-cranial cerebrovascular system.-In the United States:In...
, collaborating with eminent neurosurgeon Manuel Balado, a Mayo alumnus and also a disciple of Christfried Jakob. Under Balado, Carrillo published his initial scientífic articles. After graduation he obtained a travel grant in order to further his studies in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, where he worked in the best neuroscience laboratories, Cornelius Ariens Kappers's and the Vogts' among them.
He returned to Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
in the middle years of what historian José Luis Torres labeled "The Infamous Decade". In it, Carrillo witnessed what has been described as the "systematic sacking and destruction of his fatherland, a period characterized by the leaders' deep moral decadence, in which self-imposed corruption, economic felonies, the selling out of the national patrimony, and the impoverishment of the population's majority" (Ordóñez). Thus disillusioned – because of the "Infamous Decade's" mismanagement – of the socio-cultural proposals of the liberal, American-style democratic system, and explicitly rejecting both its nazifascist
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
and stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
alternatives, Carrillo adhered to the locally rising nationalist thought. Looking forward to a re-moralizing revolution, he complemented his scientific formation with evolving political ideas and cultural education. He reinforced his close relationship with his former companion of elementary school Homero Manzi
Homero Manzi
Homero Nicolás Manzioni Prestera, better known as Homero Manzi was an Argentine Tango lyricist, author of various famous tangos....
, as well as Arturo Jauretche, Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz, and tango
Tango music
Tango is a style of ballroom dance music in 2/4 or 4/4 time that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay . It is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta típica, which includes two violins, piano, double bass, and two bandoneons...
and theater composers Armando Discepolo y Enrique Santos Discépolo
Enrique Santos Discépolo
Enrique Santos Discépolo was an Argentine tango and milonga musician and composer, author of famous tangos such as Cambalache and many others performed by several of the most important singers of his time, amongst them notably Carlos Gardel.Discépolo was born in Buenos Aires...
, representatives of tango culture and the new nationalistic ideas; and the Argentine-German neurobiological tradition active at the neuropsychiatric hospitals later known by the names of two disciples of Christfried Jakob, Drs. Borda and Moyano. In 1937 Ramon Carrillo suffered an acute illness, the sequel of whose fever was hypertension and progressively severe headaches. He barely saved his life through the devoted efforts of his lifetime friend Salomón Chichilnisky, a medical doctor and literary author who started life carrying loads in the docks in the port of Buenos Aires to support his parents, brothers and sisters and, against all odds, became a Chaired Professor of neurology, then acting in the level of Secretary of Health helped minister Carrillo to build many public hospitals in Argentina, and later died in one of them.
During those years Ramón Carrillo exclusively dedicated himself to research and teaching, until becoming Head (1939) of the Neurology and Neurosurgery Service in the Argentinian Military Central Hospital. This position in Buenos Aires afforded him deep acquaintance with the real situation of the country's health. He became well informed on the clinical files of all the young men examined for enrolment into the military service, coming from the whole of Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, and became aware of the high prevalence of poverty-linked diseases, specially in the candidates from the poorest provinces. He carried out statistical studies showing that the country only had 45% of the required hospital beds, moreover unevenly distributed, with regions falling to 0,00% of beds for every thousand inhabitants. He thus ratified the recollections and images from his own province, evincing the state of neglect of the majority of the country.
Doubly employed because of salary needs (he was still single, but helped his mother and ten younger brother and sisters, caring for all of them to have a career), in 1942 Carrillo obtained by opposition the Chair of Neurosurgery of the Medicine Faculty. There he formed a squad of talented disciples, among them German Dickmann, Raúl Matera, D. E. Nijensohn, Raúl Carrea, Fernando Knesevich, Lorenzo Amezúa, Jorge Cohen, Jacobo and Leon Zimman, Rogelio Driollet Laspiur, Juan C. Christensen and Alberto D. Kaplan. His scientific and academic career was brilliant. Nevertheless, his life was to radically change. Great transformations were occurring in the country. In 1943 president Castillo was overthrown and another military government took on. In these circumstances, in the Hospital Militar Carrillo became acquainted with colonel Juan Domingo Perón, a patient with whom Carrillo shared long talks. The colonel was precisely who persuaded Ramón Carrillo of collaborating in planifying the national health polítics. Soon afterwards Carrillo, at age 39, briefly served as Dean of the Medicine Faculty, acting as a go-between in a fierce, highly politized, Left-Right university conflict. For early 1946, both sides were resenting him, forcing him to quit office.
By then colonel Perón democratically obtained the nation's presidence, confirming Carrillo as head of the State Secretary of Public Health, later Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance of the country. Besides Chichilnisky, Ramón Carrillo wanted to be assisted by his close friend and companion medical student the neuroscientist Braulio Moyano, another of the ablest disciples of Christfried Jakob, yet Moyano felt himself unable to serve society from such a role and preferred remaining as a neurobiologist. Who to this end left science and moved from the today Borda Hospital was, instead, Santiago Carrillo, a disciple of Moyano and brother of the new minister. Perón's wife, "Evita
Eva Perón
María Eva Duarte de Perón was the second wife of President Juan Perón and served as the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She is often referred to as simply Eva Perón, or by the affectionate Spanish language diminutive Evita.She was born in the village of Los Toldos in...
", coordinated her political action with Carrillo's, so contributing to his technical achievements.
Ramón Carrillo's action was prolific, hitherto unsurpassed. He increased the number of hospital beds in the country, from 66.300 in 1946 to 132.000 in 1954. He eradicated, in only two years, endemic diseases such as malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
, by means of highly aggressive campaigns against the vector. Syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
and venereal diseases practically vanished. He built 234 free, public hospitals or policlinics, lowered tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
' mortality rate from 130 per 100.000 to 36 per 100.000, ended epidemics sych as typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
and brucellosis
Brucellosis
Brucellosis, also called Bang's disease, Crimean fever, Gibraltar fever, Malta fever, Maltese fever, Mediterranean fever, rock fever, or undulant fever, is a highly contagious zoonosis caused by ingestion of unsterilized milk or meat from infected animals or close contact with their secretions...
, and decreased drastically the infantile mortality rate from 90 to 56 per thousand live births.
All this Ramón Carrillo did while acknowledging priority to the development of preventive medicine, the hospitals' running organization, and concepts such as regulative centralizing and executive decentralizing ("centralización normativa y descentralización ejecutiva"). The later differs from the decentralizing with merely economic goals imposed by the markets. Corresponding by letter with Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
, the so-called "creator of cybernetics", Ramón Carrillo applied it to the art of government with the name of cybernology (cibernología), creating an Instituto de Cibernología or strategic planning
Strategic planning
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. In order to determine the direction of the organization, it is necessary to understand its current position and the possible avenues...
in 1951.
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
as a branch of the State cannot be resolved while sanitary politics is not backed by a social politics. Similarly, there cannot be a social politics without an economy organized to benefit the greater part of the population." "In the field of health, the scientific achievements only are useful when they get at the reach of the whole population." These sentences portray a personality capable to abandon his admirable scientific career, internationally recognized, in order to fully devote himself to the concrete needs of his people.
Ordóñez writes: "He died in Belém do Pará
Belém
Belém is a Brazilian city, the capital and largest city of state of Pará, in the country's north region. It is the entrance gate to the Amazon with a busy port, airport and bus/coach station...
, North Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, on 20 December 1956, at his age of fifty, poverty-stricken, ailing and exiled, receiving money by mail from his friend Salomón Chichilnisky exactly as San Martín
José de San Martín
José Francisco de San Martín, known simply as Don José de San Martín , was an Argentine general and the prime leader of the southern part of South America's successful struggle for independence from Spain.Born in Yapeyú, Corrientes , he left his mother country at the...
did from his friend Aguado. Perhaps thinking, as libertador
Libertadores
Libertadores refers to the principal leaders of the Latin American wars of independence from Spain. They are named that way in contrast with the Conquistadors, who were so far the only Spanish peoples recorded in the South American history...
Simón Bolívar
Simón Bolívar
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Yeiter, commonly known as Simón Bolívar was a Venezuelan military and political leader...
did, that he has been tilling the sea ... Maybe one of his better known sentences indicates that his work remains unfinished: 'Facing the diseases generated by poverty, facing the peoples' sadness, wretchedness, and social tribulation, the microbes inasmuch as causes of disease only are secondary causes.' "