Che and Medicine

Che Guevara’s passion for public health contributed to his a legacy of social medicine in Latin America, and this book explores and reveals his thoughts on the role of a doctor. Features an introduction by Aleida Guevara March, MD, a Cuban physician who is the eldest daughter of four children born to Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his second wife, Aleida March Before Ernesto Che Guevara became “Che;” before he traveled Latin America, before he joined Fidel in Cuba, he was a medical student. In 1956 he wrote to his mother before leaving to go and join the guerilla expedition to Cuba: “My path seems to be slowly but surely diverging from that of clinical medicine, but not so far that I have lost my nostalgia for hospitals. What I told you about the professorship in physiology was a lie, but not a big one. It was a lie because I never planned to accept it, but the offer was real and there was a strong possibility that they were going to give it to me, as I had an interview and everything. Anyway, that’s all history. Saint Carlos [Karl Marx] has made a new recruit.” He had started a book on the role of the doctor in Latin America, a work he fully intended to continue writing. It remained incomplete at the time of his death in Bolivia at the age of thirty-nine, just eleven years later.