Agramonte y Simoni, Aristides

▪ Cuban-American scientist

born June 3, 1868, Camagüey, Cuba

died Aug. 19, 1931, New Orleans, La., U.S.

      physician, pathologist, and bacteriologist, a member of the Reed Yellow Fever Board of the U.S. Army that discovered (1901) the role of the mosquito in the transmission of yellow fever.

      Agramonte was the son of a prominent physician who had been killed while serving in the Cuban Army of Liberation. Brought up in New York City, Agramonte received his M.D. in 1892 from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. After he had served his internship, he conducted research in pathology and bacteriology at Bellevue Hospital and with the New York City Department of Health. He was appointed an assistant surgeon with the U.S. Army from 1898 to 1902.

      As professor of bacteriology and experimental pathology at the University of Havana (from 1900), member of the government board of infectious diseases, Cabinet secretary of health and charities, and medical practitioner for many of the Americans who lived in Havana, Agramonte was an influential leader of scientific medicine in Cuba. In 1931 he was appointed to head the new department of tropical medicine at a medical school in Louisiana, but he died while preparing to assume the position.

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