Horacio Ferrer Díaz, physician, fighter and writer from Matanzas

Abstract

The descriptive study of the province’s personalities should be a part of a project to enhance the knowledge of all Matanzasan professional related with the medical sciences and the history, who are in their turn the ones who are going to train the medical sciences students for their comprehensive education. That is the main reason of choosing the personality of the eminent doctor Horacio Ferrer Díaz, who gave prestige to our native province. He was a notable physician, specialized in Ophthalmology, who combined his professional performance with the revolutionary activities in defense of the Cuban independence. He was the inventor of a device to study the retina and another to vacuum extract the cataract, and a rotating table of examination that was unique in the world.  He published “Photometry before and after the cataract surgery” and was the first one who operated a patient with retinal detachment in Cuba. A son of the region of Union, Ferrer Díaz should be recollected forever because of his medical contributions and his great political activism at the service of the independence fighters against the Spanish colonialism, where he obtained military ranks, and against the government of Gerardo Machado and Batista’s dictatorship later. The recount of independent wars was reflected in his work With the rifle on the shoulder, written in his old age.