Carlos J. Finlay

Carlos Juan Finlay was born in the city of Puerto Principe (now Camaguey), in the Island of Cuba, on the 3rd of December, 1833. His father was Edward, a Scotch physician, and his mother, Isabel de Barres a native of France.While he was still in his infancy the family moved to Havana where the boy grew to his eleventh year, residing at times in the Capital, and at times in Guanimar.We can well imagine that the life of young Finlay in the open awakened his love for the study of Nature.

In 1844 Carlos was sent to France and studied in a school at the Havre until 1846 when he had to return to Cuba on account of an attack of cholera.

He returned to Europe in 1848 to complete his education in France, but the revolutionary movements of that year obliged him to remain for a short time in London, and during one year in a school at Mentz on the Rhine. He entered college at last in Rouen where he continued his studies until 1851 when he returned to Cuba to convalesce from an attack of typhoid fever.
The
Spanish law at the time would not validate for the degree of Bachelor in Arts, the college courses followed in France, and he came to Philadelphia where the said degree was not necessary for the study of Medicine. He graduated in Medicine on the 10th of March 1855 from the Jefferson Medical College,Dr. Finlay incorporated his diploma in the University of Havana in 1857, and began the practice of his profession. On the 16th of October 1865, he married, in the city of Havana, Miss Adela Shine, a native of the Island of Trinidad. In 1881 he went to Washington representing the colonial Government of Cuba at the International Sanitary Conference.

in 1898 He wrote at the time a complete plan of campaign against the yellow fever on the same lines, which were subsequently followed with the brilliant results now familiar to all of us.The great work of Finlay may be expressed in very few words: He discovered the fact that yellow fever is transmitted by the bite of one species of mosquito, and he invented a sure method for the extinction of the disease.

Great as our satisfaction must be, how much greater must be that of the man, illustrious as he is modest, who has made all this possible through a mental effort equaled by very few in the history of the human mind".