Portal de Cartagena
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The mayor of Cartagena, José López, discovered the commemorative plaque on the figure of Dr. Leopoldo Cándido y Alejandre (1840-1919), a regenerationist doctor, who created the first municipal service in Cartagena in 1891 on Palas Street. Hygiene and health of Spain.
The plaque has been placed in the place where he had his surgical medical consultation, now partly occupied by the building Forum of the regional administration.
The event was framed within the commemoration of the 125th anniversary of the creation of the Municipal Laboratory.
In the event they have accompanied the mayor, the Councilor for Quality of Life, Francisco José Calderón;
The councilman of Culture and Heritage, Ricardo Segado;
The councilors of the Treasury and the Office and Transparency Portal, Isabel Garcia and Maria Jose Soler, and the councilors of the municipal groups of the PP, Fernando Sáenz de Elorrieta;
And Citizens, Manuel Padín.
After the words of welcome from the mayor, who has outlined the figure of this prolific personality that displayed an intense public life in favor of the health of the most needy and to eliminate the epidemics that ravaged the city at the end of the nineteenth century;
The chronicler Luis Miguel Perez Adán has detailed the vicissitudes and circumstances, which brought him from his native Segovia to Cartagena, where he married, and became a councilor and mayor.
Perez Adán has also highlighted the already mentioned implementation of the Municipal Laboratory, his fight against malaria, which he attributed to the overcrowding of the houses of the historic center caused by the existence of the wall.
With the aim of correcting this problem, it promoted its demolition as well as the drying up of El Almarjal.
It also made Cartagena the third city to administer anti-rabies serum at the time, placing it in the vanguard of health after Madrid and Barcelona.
Leopoldo Cándido, who already counted with other mayors with a street in the city, counts from today with a plaque in the street Palas that remembers its sanitary facet, in which it was a true pioneer.
LEOPOLDO CÁNDIDO
The figure of Leopoldo Cándido Alejandre is part of the regenerationist ideology of several Spanish doctors from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who sought to adapt the conditions of Spanish health care to that of the so-called civilized countries.
Possibly, Leopoldo Cándido is the best exponent of this regenerationist trend among Cartagena's health professionals.
Biographical data
Born in Segovia in 1850, Leopoldo Cándido already appears established in Cartagena in 1873, like doctor of the Charity in the district of the Magdalena.
His relationship with Cartagena was probably due to the fact that his father, Jose Maria Cándido, was then assigned to the city as a customs inspector.
Although it was his marriage to Adela Soler Abellán, daughter of a well-known industrialist of the city, which would definitively bind him to Cartagena, where he lived and practiced medicine until his death on December 28, 1919.
In 1881 entered politics like councilman, was Mayor of Cartagena in four occasions during years 1883, 1886, 1887 and 1888. He was Subdelegate of Medicine, also provincial deputy and vice-president of the Provincial Deputation of Murcia.
From 1885 he held the position of Medical Inspector of Municipal Hygiene.
He was appointed director of the Municipal Service of Hygiene and Health since its creation in 1891 (including the Municipal Hygiene Laboratory);
Charge he held until his death.
As a member of the Medical-Pharmaceutical Academy of the city, he was involved in the elaboration of the report issued by this institution in 1879 on the causes of malaria and its solutions to combat it, including the desiccation of Almarjal.
He also planned a new building to house the prisoners of the party jail, a decision of marked social character that probably was motivated because Leopoldo Cándido knew well the poor conditions of habitability that had these prisoners, since in August 1880 he was appointed doctor Of said prison.
Leopoldo Cándido worked together with the Municipal Board of Health to promote the creation of the poor register necessary for the proper functioning of municipal charities and also promoted the practice of vaccination against smallpox.
On January 10, 1895, he wrote one of the most glorious pages for the History of Western Medicine in Cartagena, for the first time in Spain the administration of the first anti-diphtheric horse serum obtained by Dr. Ferran to a human Diphtheria patient, in particular a twenty-seven-month-old boy, successfully and with great repercussion worldwide.
He also excelled in prolific scientific production as a hygienist - especially in the fight against cholera, malaria, diphtheria or tuberculosis infections of his time - and was also the founding director of three health journals (La Union de las Ciencias Médicas 1881-1887 , Sanitary Statistics 1901-1922, Popular Journal of Hygiene (1904-1907) and the local newspaper La Fusión in 1884.
He was president of the Medical-Pharmaceutical Academy of Cartagena, and member of the Royal Academy of Medicine and Surgery of Murcia, the Medical-Surgical Academy Matritense, the Academy of Medical Sciences of Badajoz, the Anthropological Atheneum of Madrid, the Academy of Hygiene of Madrid, the Spanish Society of Hygiene, and the Hygiene Society of Paris.
He was president of the College of Physicians of Cartagena and La Unión and honorary president of the College of Practitioners of Cartagena and La Unión.
He was Medical Director of the Sanitary Ambulance of Cartagena providing it with urgent service and modern organization, becoming dean and president of Honor of the Red Cross.
After ceasing as mayor in 1888, as vice-president of the provincial deputation, he designed a reform plan for the provincial hospital of Murcia, which included the construction of a demented pavilion, another measure of deep social concern.
He received multiple awards and awards by national and international scientific institutions for his health activities, always guided by philanthropy and medicine.
Some were: Diploma of Honor and Sanitary Merit by the General Directorate of Health, First Class Cross of the Civil Order of Charity, Grand Cross of Charity, Commander of the Order of Alfonso XII, Knight of the Royal American Order of Isabel la Catholic and Charles III Cross, Honorary Superior of the Civil Administration, Silver and Gold Medals of the Red Cross and Great Plate of Honor and Merit of the Red Cross.
He died in Cartagena on December 28, 1919. Currently in the city of Cartagena there is a street called "Alcalde Leopoldo Cándido" and a Scientific Seminar in his honor: Seminar Doctor Leopoldo Cándido y Alejandre.
Source: Ayuntamiento de Cartagena
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