Carlos Juan Finlay
National Doctor’s Day in Cuba – December 3, 2023
On December 3 every year, Cuban doctors celebrate their professional holiday. National Doctor’s Day in Cuba was established to commemorate the birthday of Carlos Juan Finlay, a Cuban physician and epidemiologist who was the first to discover the transmission vector of yellow fever.
Carlos Juan Finlay was born on December 3, 1833 in Camagüey to a Scottish-born father and a French-born mother. After attending school in France, he enrolled at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Following his graduation, Finlay returned to Cuba and set up an ophthalmology practice.
Alongside ophthalmology, Finlay was interested in epidemiology. In 1881, he theorized that a mosquito was a carrier of the yellow fever pathogen. A year later, Finlay discovered that it was members of the Aedeas genus that were responsible for transmitting the disease. Finlay’s hypothesis was confirmed in 1900 by the U.S. Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba, presided over by U.S. Army physician Major Walter Reed.
