User:Franco el estudiante/Carlos Malbrán

Carlos Gregorio Malbrán was a renowned Argentine physician and legislator of the late 19th century and early 20th century, he was a pioneer in bacteriological research in his country, and an important figure in Argentine public health.

Biography
Carlos Gregorio del Carmen Malbrán was born in 1862 in the town of Andalgalá, Catamarca Province.

He studied in the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, and in 1882, he started working in internal medicine in the same city.

He was a practising doctor at the Hospital Ramos Mejía between 1883 and 1886, and even without a doctorate, in December of that year he was sent by the national government to help combat an outbreak of cholera in Mendoza Province and research the disease. In 1887 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the Pathogenesis of Cholera, which would be published and would guarantee him early fame. By that time, the microbial theory of Louis Pasteur had been accepted and knowledge about bacterial infections, the mechanisms to combat it and the recognition of its importance for health activity were advancing. In Argentina, Malbrán would be in charge of disseminating this new theory and practice from his chair and public activity.

In the city of Buenos Aires he worked in various hospitals. In January 1888 he was sent by the Argentine government to study the use of serum against tuberculosis and diphtheria at the Munich Institute of Hygiene, under the direction of Max Joseph von Pettenkofer (1818-1901), and at the Berlin Institute of Hygiene, with Robert Koch (1843-1910). He also represented Argentina in several international congresses about the main contagious and parasitic diseases, including bubonic plague and malaria.

After his return in 1889 he was appointed member of the Buenos Aires Commission for Waste Management and in 1892 he became the first Technical Hygiene Inspector of the Municipality. He was also appointed head of Pathological Anatomy practical work and then substitute professor of the same subject.

By decree of October 3, 1895, he was commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior to study, with professors Emil Adolf von Behring and Pierre Paul Émile Roux, the diphtheria antitoxin, while at the same time serving as correspondent for the newspaper La Nación.

He was the founder of the chair of Bacteriology in the Faculty of Medical Sciences, inaugurating the course in 1897. He held said chair until 1920. He was later counselor and vice-dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires.

Malbrán was the main promoter of public health in his country and also worked on the prevention, minimization and treatment of malaria, hydatid cysts and leprosy.

In 1899 he presided the Argentine delegation to help control an outbreak of bubonic plague in neighbouring Paraguay.

In January 1900 he was appointed president of the Council of Hygiene. The weekly magazine Caras y Caretas then described him as «one of the young doctors in the country who has distinguished himself the most in recent times for his preparation and his activity.».

From that position, he boosted the struggle against leprosy and organized and presided a national conference for that objetive.

That same year, he represented his country in the International Sanitary Convention between Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. He also attended sanitary medical congresses in Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro.

On 1903, he again represented Argentina in the International Congress of Medicine in Madrid, Spain. On 1904 he made the first move into making the National Institute of Microbiology.

On 1906, he presided the National Conference about Leprosy and the next year, he was designated President of the Council of Public Health of the city of Buenos Aires.

On April 1910, he was elected as national deputy for the Catamarca Province. From his position, he promoted the approval of various laws related with public health, one of those being mandatory vacunation, that established the protocol to follow against malaria, sanitary taxes and pharmaceutical activity laws.

On July 10, 1916 he finally inaugurated the Instituto de Bacteriología o de Microbiología, that included a vaccine storage, that was considered as one of the main achievement of the Argentine public health. The establishment, where Malbrán played an important role and that would become an important research center in microbiology, would be called on his behalf, the Instituto Nacional de Microbiología Carlos G. Malbrán.

He published numerous essays, works for specialized magazines and ten books in which stands out Apuntes sobre salud pública (1931) and Patogenia del cólera. He also wrote about syphilis, dermatology, leprosy, malaria, food safety, diphteria, vaccines, tuberculosis, sanitary legislation, legal medicine, maritime sanitation and medicine exercise.

He died on August 1, 1940 in the city of Buenos Aires.