Enrique Finochietto

Enrique Finochietto (March 13, 1881 – February 17, 1948) was an Argentine academic, physician and inventor.

Life and work Enrique Finochietto was born in 1881 in Buenos Aires to Ana and Tomás Finochietto. His father died during his early childhood, and he was raised mostly by his mother. He excelled in industrial design while in secondary school, and enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires in 1897.

Finochietto interned at the university's Clinical Hospital, becoming an assistant to a surgeon, Dr. Alejandro Posadas. His thesis, El Pie-Bot Varus-Equino-Congénito, earned him a medical degree with honors, in 1904. He entered the Clinic of Skin and Venereal Diseases, a dependency of Buenos Aires' important Rawson Hospital, as a surgical intern.

He taught as a Clinical Professor of Surgery at the University of Buenos Aires, and became the president of the Buenos Aires Surgical Society in 1922. He developed new surgical techniques in 1924 for the treatment of the stomach, duodenum, and small intestine. Dr. Finochietto in 1929 performed the first intervention on a cardiac lesion in Argentina, successfully repairing a bullet wound to the heart of a minor.

Dr. Finochietto was also a fan of the Tango, and he counted crooner Carlos Gardel among his friends. Composer Julio de Caro, composed Buen amigo (Good Friend) in his honor, in 1925. An academic, he published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and began work on a sixteen-volume surgical guide with his brother, Ricardo. Finochietto, who had contracted syphilis during his travels abroad, suffered from worsening health, and he accepted retirement from the university in 1933 as professor emeritus. The ailing surgeon extracted a hydatid cyst from a child in 1940 - his last surgical intervention. His condition forced him to abandon his practice and he continued writing until his death on February 17, 1948, at age 66.