On September 4, 1838, Francisco Argilagos Ginferrer was born in the city of Puerto Príncipe; he graduated as a doctor in Paris, surgeon at the Saint Vincent de Paul Ophthalmic Hospital in France; he was the first Mambi ophthalmologist and inventor of the aneritra light filter for ophthalmoscopy; writer and philosopher who founded and directed more than 50 newspapers.
He practiced medicine in Camagüey and Santiago de Cuba, and transcended for his quick cures and happy operations, until he decided to go to Mexico and join the liberation war of Benito Juárez; there he treated patients and fought from 1864 to 1867, reached the rank of Effective Commander of the National Army and directed the Military Hospital of Córdoba, as Chief Surgeon, a position he held for three years, and was assistant to General González Ortega.
Back in Cuba he donated all his fortune to the revolutionary cause and during the Ten Years’ War he rose up, together with several of his brothers, in Las Clavellinas and fought without abandoning his surgical set; He participated in the Junta de Las Minas on November 26, 1868 and fought alongside Manuel de Quesada, Ignacio Agramonte, Manuel Boza, Augusto Arango and Vicente García, among others; he was in the victorious fields of Bonilla, El Culeco, Arenillas, in the capture of Las Tunas, Arroyo Blanco and San Jerónimo, and participated in the battles of Las Guásimas and Palo Seco.
For his intrepidity and courage Argilagos Ginferrer obtained the rank of Colonel and Medical Surgeon of the Chief of Staff of the Liberating Army; he stood out for his excellent military technique and bravery in combat, his amazing activity, his reckless courage, his brief and forceful orders, his accurate aim and his box of surgical instruments.
On an unspecified date he fell prisoner of the Spanish and saved his life by pure miracle, because the enemy soldiers themselves recognized him as the doctor who, after the combat, cured the wounded of both armies; those who fought under his orders always remembered the phrase repeated by Rafael: “Our occupation is war. Let’s go to war then”; and they also said that when he was asked about the place for the possible retreat from the battlefield, he would answer ‘The cemetery’.
Rafael Argilagos Ginferrer won several prizes as a writer and inventor; his cultural heritage includes, in addition to works related to medicine, five literary works, two on agriculture and zootechnics, 11 Americanist works, and many others of political content collected in 3 volumes.
