Medicine in Antioquia has been in mourning since the night of last Thursday, June 30, following César Augusto Giraldo, one of the most important promoters of forensic sciences in Medellín and Colombia, died at the age of 81.
As a passionate teacher and a leader who managed to make the practice of this discipline take flight, this doctor from Antioquia is remembered, whose legacy is calculated as “invaluable” in the voice of dozens of colleagues, friends and leaders of the health sector.
From a broad and fundamental collection of books and academic articles that have become a reference point of reference for entire generations of Medicine students, to the struggles to vindicate the social function of this discipline through the Institute of Forensic Medicine, they are part of the legacy left by in its wake
Carlos Eduardo Valdés, who led that last institute between 2011 and 2018, expresses that the repercussion of Giraldo’s work is not only felt in Medellín, but has become a guide for the practice of forensic medicine throughout the country and even of Latinamerica.
Starting from his most famous book, titled Forensic Medicine and published in 1982 in Bogotá, his contributions were also reflected in the first scientific studies that set out to address issues such as sexual violence, child abuse or health events from the perspective of this discipline. public.
a man of letters
Tiberio Álvarez Echeverri, who during the last decades has dedicated himself to researching the history of Medicine in the department, explains that the importance of Giraldo’s legacy covers several fields.
After sharing classrooms with him in the 1960s, Álvarez remembers him as a great reader and academic with an innate gift for transmitting knowledge.
“He was the son of a doctor and studied high school with the Jesuits. He later went to the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Antioquia, where he was a good student and a good companion. He always drew attention to his high culture, since he was an inveterate reader”, recalls the doctor and researcher.
From his vein as a reader, Valdés resumes, Giraldo acquired a special ability to explain complex concepts using simple and accessible language, which made him a beacon for medical students from all over the country.
“He wrote in such a simple way that one, a neophyte in these subjects, understood it from beginning to end. He abandoned that bombastic and technical language of the doctor, to take it to a colloquial language, of examples, of situations”, explains the former director.
As Valdés illustrates, for many of the young students who saw in forensic sciences an exciting path to dedicate their professional lives, Giraldo’s texts were the fuel to drive their arrival in that field of knowledge.
Throughout his life, this vocation to teach made the doctor one of the most respected and beloved professors at the Antioquia University School of Medicine and more recently at the CES University, where he served as scientific advisor to the Center for Law and Health Studies.
the pioneer researcher
Along with his vocation as a teacher, Carlos Alberto Palacio Acosta, dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Antioquia, explains that Giraldo’s imprint was engraved in the design that the Institute of Legal Medicine preserves today.
“He builds the entire structure of the Institute of Legal Medicine, manages to free it, along with other great men of forensic sciences in Bogotá, from what used to be the judicial system. For what the forensic area is, it was a fundamental step,” he says.
To understand this shift, former director Valdés points out that since its appearance in the country, more than a century ago, forensic medicine had established itself as a discipline with the mission of shedding light on court cases.
This means that, as is the case today, when it was necessary to be clear regarding the circumstances surrounding a crime, forensic doctors took action to put their scientific method at the service of the case. However, his role was only reduced to that task.
Starting in the 1970s, adds Valdés, it was thanks to the work initiated by Giraldo that forensic science began to stop being seen as a mere support for justice and became a key tool for making all kinds of decisions of interest. public.
“The most important achievement is the approach of a more social legal medicine, as a fundamental element for social health,” says Valdés, pointing out the role that the institute has today to face problems such as gender violence, child abuse, among others. many others.
During yesterday’s session, several institutions such as Legal Medicine, the CES University, the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the University of Antioquia, among others, lamented the death of the Antioquia doctor and highlighted his contributions to the country.
“We must not lose his legacy, to return to forensic medicine more social, with more commitment and without abandoning his judicial commitment”, concludes Valdés.