CubaPLUS Magazine

It is the house where the child who became an adult was born on December 3, 1833. a wise man of medicine and important discoverer of the vector that transmits yellow fever, causing lethal epidemics in its time in vast tropical regions of this continent, where today there is an important museum of the benefactor of humanity Dr. Carlos J. Finlay.

By decision of the Office of the Historian of the City of Camagüey, located in the heritage center of the beautiful city of the central eastern region of Cuba, the building has become an attractive socio-cultural project. The important discovery of the outstanding Cuban doctor has marked him for his entire life, even knowing that his service record in science is much wider and even connoted in the work of epidemiological control and ophthalmology.

That's why looking into the clear and happy world of his childhood is very gratifying or novel, depending on where the visitors come from to the old house that perpetuates his memory. Marked with the number 4, currently 5 Cristo Street, between Pamela Fernández and Local, Finlay's former home was converted into a museum since 2002, purpose of Latin American Medicine Day every December 3, which is commemorated in honor of the birth of the prominent Cuban.

It is a building built at the end of the 18th century. It is said that by the year of birth of Carlos J. Finlay, had just settled in the then Port-au-Prince -first name of Camagüey- the English graduate Eduard Finlay, father of our doctor. In its architectural style, influences of Moorish art predominant in the initial centuries of the conquest and baroque elements that arrived later, not very notable. It is a single-story house and has a nave or bay parallel to the street, which is lavish in the living room and the main room, as well as part of the hallway that flanks it on one side, very typical then.

mainAnnouncing the arrival of the neoclassical, it has the moderate support of the façade, the main door in the middle of it and the semicircular arch that connects the room with the dining room, a distribution typical of that stage. There are capitals of the Tuscan order attached to the walls with their shafts. An Impressive simplicity pervades everything. It had large rooms intended for bedrooms and the two main ones for members of the family. A dining room, smaller in size than the living room, communicates with the terrace facing the patio and at the end with the backyard.