Dr. Carlos Finlay was born on December 3, 1822 in Puerto Principe, Camagüey, of a Scott father and a French creole mother from Trinidad. Studied in France and graduated as a physician from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. In 1855, he opened his private practice specializing in yellow fever. He wrote forty articles on the disease. He worked in hospitals in Peru, Trinidad and France before settling in Cuba in 1870.
He espoused the idea that yellow fever was transmitted thru the bite of the mosquito Aedes. He explained his theory to the Washington International Sanitary Conference of 1881. During the U.S. occupation in Cuba in 1900, he was appointed by the U.S. Surgeon General to a Commission under Mayor Walter Reed to test his theory on U.S. army volunteers. After the establishment of the Cuban Republic in 1902, he was appointed public health chief, and the government created in his honor the Finlay Institute for Investigations in Tropical Medicine.
Dr. Finlay was nominated to the Nobel Prize in physiology and received the French Legion of Honor. He died in Havana in 1915. Cubans in the island celebrate on December 3, physician day in honor of Finlay.
