Fidel Pagés
Fidel Pagés Miravé (26 January 1886 – 21 September 1923) was a Spanish military surgeon, known for developing the technique of epidural anesthesia.[1]
In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Pagés and the second or maternal family name is Miravé.
Fidel Pagés Miravé
26 January 1886
21 September 1923 (aged 37)
1908-1923
Discoverer of
epidural anesthesia
He practised a wide range of traumatological and surgical techniques, both for war injuries and civil purposes, contributed to the modernisation of surgery in Spain and participated actively in the reorganisation of the Spanish Military Health system in the 1920s. Due to his early accidental death, his pioneering work in epidural anesthesia (or metameric anesthesia as he called it) went unnoticed for many years outside of Spanish speaking countries.[2]
Early life and education[edit]
Fidel Pagés was born and grew up in the Spanish city of Huesca in an upper-middle-class family. His parents were Juan Pagés Maraque and Concepción Miravé Sesé. His father died when Fidel was 7 and his mother remarried, an episode which would have great effect in the personality of the child.[3]
In 1901 he started his studies of Medicine at the University of Zaragoza, where he received his degree in Medicine and Surgery with honors in 1908. During these years he also learned the German language, something that would be of importance later in his career when it gave him the opportunity to exchange experiences with surgeons of German origin.
Death and posthumous recognition[edit]
In 1922 Pagés was promoted to Major Medical. On 21 September 1923 he died in a traffic accident in Quintanapalla, near Burgos, while returning to Madrid with his family from their summer vacation in Cestona, near San Sebastián. After his death, many tributes were performed in Spain. In the Urgency Hospital of Madrid, the Queen unveiled a plaque in his memory; another plaque was placed in the Military Hospital in San Sebastián; and in 1926 the Docker Hospital in Melilla was renamed after him.
His work had neither been translated nor presented in the few medical congresses of that time and was practically forgotten. In 1931, Italian surgeon Achille Mario Dogliotti described what he thought was a new type of regional anesthesia and was credited for some years with the discovery of epidural anesthesia. Only with the passage of time, an Argentinian scientific journal claimed recognition for the Spanish doctor, who was then given full credit by Dogliotti and the medical community.[4]
The Spanish Society of Anesthesiology, Reanimation and Pain Therapy (SEDAR) awards every two years a prize that bears Pagés' name.[5] In addition, the Ministry of Defense of Spain in June 2007 created the Award for Military Health Research Fidel Pagés Miravé.