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History Feb 20, 2020

207th Anniversary of the birth of Dr. Gonzalitos

On February 20, 2020, the 207th anniversary of the birth of Benemérito de Nuevo León, Dr. José Eleuterio González, founder of our School and Hospital, and the most outstanding humanist, is commemorated.

Dr. José Eleuterio González Mendoza was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, on February 20, 1813. Son of the marriage formed by the militia captain Matías González and María Ana Mendoza. He studied at the Seminary College and Literary Institute of Guadalajara. In 1830 at the invitation of the Regiomontan friar Gabriel Jiménez, his Greek teacher, he moved to the city of San Luis Potosí, where in addition to attending the pastor, he entered the National Hospital of San Juan de Dios to practice Medicine, being his teachers Dr. Pablo de Quadriello and Pascual Aranda.

The referred friar, when his health diminishes due to his advanced age, he decides to spend his last days on earth that saw him be born and convinces the young Gonzalitos to move to Monterrey, where he will reside definitively since December 13, 1833. With the In order to continue studying medical sciences, he contacts the Hospital of Our Lady of the Rosary, where he begins to work and is soon appointed director of the hospital.

From 1835, in the aforementioned hospital, he began his task as an educator, by opening a chair of Medicine and Pharmacy, based on his self-taught learning. He received his medical degree on March 8, 1842, by the government of Nuevo León. That year he opened another chair of Medicine that was interrupted by the American Invasion of 1846. Once the peace was restored, the Pharmacy course began in 1849 and, four years later, he was appointed holder of an Obstetrics chair.

In 1851 he was appointed member of the Health Council, instituted at his initiative, and which served as a legal platform to realize his long-awaited Hospital-School project. Finally, on October 30, 1859, as part of the Civil College, he founded the School of Medicine, whose career lasted six years, also teaching that of Pharmacy in five. Dr. González took charge of the chairs of Anatomy, Operative Medicine and Obstetrics. Since then he assumes the direction of the School of Medicine, a position in which it will last until his death (1888)

Dr. González, in addition to the founder of the School of Medicine and the Civil Hospital, should be considered the first professor and systematic promoter of Anatomy. To teach this subject, he refers that his basic texts were the Compendium of Maygrier, the work of Cruvelhier and General Anatomy of Beclard; London Hygiene; the Pathology of Roche and Samson; The Therapeutics and Medical Matter of Alibert; Flatin Obstetrics; Belloc Legal Medicine.

He also published in 1863 his Elemental Treaty of General Anatomy, a work that was of great educational and curricular help for medical students. In this regard, the wise doctor warns in the prologue of the aforementioned work: “I do not intend to go as an author, nor do I write for teachers; but for my disciples. Out of an imperative need, seeing that it was not possible to acquire the necessary books to teach general Anatomy, I decided to write this small treatise… ”

His facet as a professor is only part of his transcendent participation in the scientific and humanistic life of Nuevo León.


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