Guillermo Rawson (24 June 1821 – 20 January 1890) was a medical doctor and politician in nineteenth-century
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
. In 1862, when he was the Interior Minister of Argentina, he met Captain
Love Jones-Parry and
Lewis Jones, who were on their way to Patagonia to investigate whether it was suitable for the creation of a
Welsh settlement there. Rawson came to an agreement with them, and this resulted in the creation of a colony in the
Chubut Valley in the following years. The city of
Rawson, the capital of the province of
Chubut, was named after him.
Biography
Rawson's parents were
Amán Rawson, a doctor who had emigrated from the United States to Argentina, and Justina Rojo, a daughter of a wealthy family in
San Juan, where Guillermo was born. His elder brother was the artist
Franklin Rawson. His half-brother was Lieutenant Colonel
Juan de Dios Rawson, grandfather of
Arturo Rawson.
After a
Jesuit education in San Juan, Rawson graduated from the Medical Faculty of
University of Buenos Aires in 1844. Rawson became interested in politics and democracy. In 1853, he was jailed for opposing
Nazario Benavidez, the ''
caudillo
A ''caudillo'' ( , ; osp, cabdillo, from Latin , diminutive of ''caput'' "head") is a type of personalist leader wielding military and political power. There is no precise definition of ''caudillo'', which is often used interchangeably with " ...
'' or ''de facto'' governor of San Juan. The following year he was a member of the
Paraná Congress, and from 1862, he was Interior Minister in the government of
Bartolomé Mitre.
Apart from politics, Rawson was interested in medicine and hygiene. In 1876, he attended the
Centennial Exposition
The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official World's Fair to be held in the United States, was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 10 to November 10, 1876, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the ...
in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
to present his work on public health in Buenos Aires, the most developed body of work on the subject at the time. In 1879, he was elected a member of the
American Antiquarian Society.
American Antiquarian Society Members Directory
/ref>
Rawson spent a year in Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
in 1881 for medical treatment, before returning to Argentina. He returned to France for further treatment in 1885 and died in Paris in 1890.
The building of the first medical school in Buenos Aires is named Escuela Dr Guillermo Rawson in his honour.
Further reading
* Aguilar, A. (1971). ''El Dr. Guillermo Rawson''. San Juan, Argentina: Editorial Sanjuanina.
* Larrain, Jacob (1893)
''Biografía del doctor Guillermo Rawson''.
La Plata: Imp., Lit. y Encuad. de Solá Hnos. Sesé y Ca.
* Rawson, Guillermo, and Alberto B. Martinez (Ed.) (1891)
''Escritos y discursos del doctor Guillermo Rawson''
(3rd Edition). Buenos Aires: Compañía Sud-Americana de Billetes de Banco.
References
External links
*
The Escuela Dr Guillermo Rawson in Himetop - The History of Medicine Topographical database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rawson, Guillermo
1821 births
1890 deaths
Argentine activists
Argentine physicians
Argentine prisoners and detainees
People from San Juan, Argentina
Burials at La Recoleta Cemetery
Argentine people of American descent
Members of the American Antiquarian Society
Ministers of Internal Affairs of Argentina