Antonio Lorenzo-Luaces Iraola: Military medicine and patriotic commitment in the Ten Years' War

Abstract

Introduction: the Ten Years' War was the first major Cuban independence conflict, and it generated significant health challenges for the insurgent forces. Physicians played an important role in caring for combatants under irregular warfare conditions. Antonio Lorenzo-Luaces Iraola, trained in the United States and with experience in the Civil War, joined the Liberation Army, integrating his medical practice with a patriotic and military commitment.

Development: Luaces Iraola applied the knowledge he had acquired abroad to confront the adverse sanitary conditions of the war in the manigua, characterized by shortages of medicines, limited instruments, and a lack of hospital infrastructure. He performed medical and military duties simultaneously. He reached the military rank of colonel. He organized improvised field hospitals, treated the wounded, and applied military medicine strategies adapted to the Cuban reality, contributing to preserving the operational capacity of the troops.

Final considerations: Antonio Lorenzo-Luaces Iraola’s trajectory reflects the close relationship between medicine, patriotic commitment, and military action during the Cuban wars of independence. Luaces Iraola’s international experience and his work in the Liberation Army demonstrate the circulation of medical and military knowledge and the strategic role of medicine in contexts of war. This study rescues his historical memory, highlights the importance of military medicine in the survival of the troops, and provides elements for understanding the origins of military medicine in Cuba and its influence on the nineteenth-century emancipation processes.