American Medical Biographies/Andrade, Eduardo Penny

Andrade, Eduardo Penny (1872–1906)

The son of Jose and Eliza Penny Andrade and grandson of Gen. Jose E. Andrade, Eduardo was born at Maracaibo, February 2, 1872, and educated and brought up there.

He began the study of medicine in the National College of Maracaibo in 1888 and the next year continued them in the University of Caracas, finally graduating from Georgetown University in 1895.

About this time he was appointed a member of the Venezuela Legation at Washington, a post he held for two years, and while there studied bacteriology in the hygienic laboratory of the Marine Hospital Service.

In 1901 he came to New York and entered the clinic of Dr. Knapp, and in 1902 went to Cuba and graduated at the University of Havana. Here it was, in 1902, after fourteen years of preparation of the most searching character, that he first entered upon actual practice, yet, in a few months, when the State Board of Health of Florida opened a bacteriological laboratory in Jacksonville its offered directorship was accepted. Here he remained until his death, September 20, 1906. He married in 1905, Mary McLaughlin, the youngest daughter of Major McLaughlin of Jacksonville, and was survived by the wife and a little son.

The thoroughness with which he did all his work will be best shown by the fact that he had studied medicine fourteen years before he began to practise and graduated from no fewer than four colleges and attended clinics in five different countries. He was a fluent speaker and well versed in the literature of all modern languages, a classical scholar and had a broad knowledge of the history of the world. He was the first to discover the existence of Malta fever in Venezuela. After returning home from Washington, in 1897, with Dr. B. Mosquera, he worked up a number of cases of Malta fever (Graceta Medica, Caracas, July 15, 1898), thus demonstrating for the first time the existence of this disease on the American Continent. Dr. Andrade furnished the inspiration, and those who knew his enthusiastic and indefatigable zeal cannot escape the conviction that he did a liberal share of the work, though in the report he is only ranked as assistant. The custom of the country and his own innate modesty kept him from getting proper credit.

He was the first to find and report a case of filariasis in the state of Florida. Though his practice was chiefly in diseases of the eye, ear, nose and throat, his heart was in bacteriology.

A loyal friend, a genial companion, and a sparkling conversationalist, he had a keen sense of humor and enjoyed a good story.

For months he knew that a disease which held out no hope of cure was slowly but surely killing him, but he nevertheless attended as assiduously to his duties in behalf of suffering humanity as physical pain would permit.