Max Gonzalez Olaechea

Maximiliano González Olaechea, better known as Max González Olaechea, (Arequipa, Peru, November 30, 1867 – Ica, February 5, 1946) was a physician Peruvian clinician and university professor.

Biography

Son of Julián Gonzáles and Trinidad Olaechea. He is the brother of Manuel González Olaechea (lawyer, journalist and university professor) and Víctor González Olaechea (magistrate).

He completed his studies at the San Fernando Faculty of Human Medicine of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima, where he graduated with a thesis on atrophic liver cirrhosis of malarial origin (1891).. Later he graduated as a doctor of medicine presenting the thesis: "The epiplocele following the opening of liver abscesses by the method of large incisions" (1893).

In 1892 he was appointed interim assistant doctor at the Dos de Mayo National Hospital, also having a brief stint at the San Bartolomé de Lima Military Hospital. In 1912 he became head physician at Hospital Dos de Mayo. At that time, he was also teaching. In 1914 he was appointed head of the San José Ward of the same hospital, where he worked uninterruptedly until 1931, when he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.

In the field of university teaching, he was three times dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of San Marcos (1931; 1939-1941; and 1945-1946), professor of General Pathology (1901), of Clínica Médica, Legal Medicine, Surgical Nosography (1903), Childbirth Theory (1904), Pathology and Propedeutic Clinic and Semiology (1906-1922) and, finally, Men's Medical Clinic (1922-1946). He formed numerous generations of doctors, who paid him fervent admiration.

He was the initiator and promoter of semiology in the teaching of clinical medicine. He was the first to practice lumbar puncture, when he was a medical student (1890). He was one of the first to use the electrocardiograph, brand Siemens, acquired by the Faculty and installed in the Hospital Nacional Dos de Mayo. He had a special predilection for neurology, on which he made original observations, although his articles published in specialized magazines tell us They also demonstrate their interest in the various organ systems and systems (digestive, respiratory, circulatory and renal), as well as in infectious diseases, such as the Peruvian wart. He introduced new classifications of diseases, such as those of the kidney, and made diagnoses of illnesses that were new to the Lima medical environment.

Similarly, he was president of the Unión Fernandina Medical Society; President of the National Academy of Medicine, between 1921 and 1923; and the first Latin American doctor to be named an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Medicine, in New York (1925).

Posts

His works focus on almost all branches of Internal Medicine. Exclusively on neurological issues he made 34 publications. Most of them were published in La Crónica Medica and in the Revista Médica Peruana .

Among his publications, we cite the following:

• Clinical forms of Carrion disease (Peruvian wart).
• Two cases of wart generated in Lima.
• Syphilytic Banti syndrome associated with icterygen hepatitis.
• Infectious eosinophilia and vagotony.
• Sub-bag or slow evolution endocartitis.
• Pulmonary artery sclerosis. Pulmonary emphysema.
• Classification of icteria.
• Epidemic encephalitis.
• Herpes area and epidemic encephalitis.
• Gastrointestinal syndrome reflex by calculous colecistitis.
• Acute ataxia of Leyden.
• Amiotrophic lateral sclerosis.
• Rhizomelic spondylitis.

Tributes

In his honor, a class of Peruvian doctors bears his name.

In the city of Lima, a bust of him was installed in the Parque de la Medicina (sculpture by Campagnola).

Similarly, on February 5, 1947, the Max González Olaechea Foundation donated a sculpture of him, sculpted by Victorio Macho, to the Dos de Mayo Hospital in Lima, where he practiced his profession.

Dr. Aljovín, then president of the Peruvian National Academy of Medicine, paid him a heartfelt tribute on the 40th anniversary of his death.

In addition, it is noteworthy that in the district of La Victoria, in Lima, there is a street with his name, which is the one that passes through where classes were previously taught at the San Norberto Parish School.