Francisco Javier Muñiz

Francisco Javier Muñiz (21 December 1795 – 8 April 1871) was an Argentine colonel, legislator, and medical doctor. He treated patients and died during the Great Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1871.

Personal life Francisco Javier Muñiz was born in San Isidro, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina on 21 December 1795.

Early military service and medical school Diego Abad de Santillán, Francisco MuñizHe studied at the Instituto Médico Militar (Military Medical Institute) beginning in 1814. Muñiz graduated as a doctor in 1821 In 1824 he was transferred to the fort at Chascomús, He was dean, or president, of a Buenos Aires medical faculty. Rosas, in an attempt to build alliances overseas, sent collected fossils to Jean Henri Dupotet, Rear Admiral of the French Navy. Dupotet then sent them to Paris.

Apuntes Toggraficos, published in 1847 by Muñiz, contained his topographical notes that discussed the study of fossils in the relative ages of sedimentary strata in areas south of the Buenos Aires Province by naturalists, including Charles Darwin. This inquiry into the existence and later extinction of a variety of cattle raised on the ranches of Buenos Aires would be of little intellectual interest today, were it not thus linked with the celebrated theory of evolution, and the appears of Dr. Muñiz would be of lesser interest, too, except for the observations cited by Darwin in the Journal of Researches (commonly known as The Voyage of the Beagle).#tag:ref|Darwin wrote: "A niata bull with a common cow, or the reverse cross, produces offspring having an intermediate character, but with the niata characters strongly displayed: according to Senor Muñiz, there is the clearest evidence, contrary to the common believe of agriculturalists in analogous cases, that the niata cow when crossed with a common bull transmits her peculiarities more strongly than the niata bull when crossed with a common cow." He sent his description to Darwin on 30 August 1846 for his comments. Darwin encouraged him to send specimens to France, which were received in Paris, apparently sent by Rosas. It was determined to be a Smilodon bonaerensis. In a series commemorating scientists, Argentina issued a stamp with a portrait of Francisco Javier Muñiz in 1966. Hospital Muñiz, the oldest Infectious Diseases Hospital in Latin America, is named in his honor.