In honor of what would have been Argentinian heart surgeon René Favaloro's 96th birthday, Google's doodle team put together a lovely illustration for the search engine's homepage Friday.
Favaloro, who was born on July 12, 1923, in La Plata, Argentina, was beloved for his dedication and contributions to medicine. The grandson of Italian immigrants was heavily influenced by his uncle, a general medical practitioner, and according to the journal Clinical Cardiology, he often tagged along on medical rounds as a kid.
His uncle inspired him to enter the field himself, and when in medical school, Favaloro was especially drawn to thoracic surgery.
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Unfortunately, his offer to work at the Rawson Hospital in Buenos Aires came with a catch: He’d have to join the ruling Peronist Justicialist Party. Favaloro refused and chose instead to fill a position as a country doctor in the small town of Jacinto Aruaz.
Though he only planned to stay a short while until the political climate settled, the squalid conditions he witnessed there kept him around for 12 years.
He grew to believe all doctors in Latin America should consider working among the poor. "They would be able to see the combination of dirt and fumes," he said, according to the New York Times. "The people have only one room where they cook, they live ... where they have their children, where they eat."
Favaloro did eventually move to the United States in 1962 to begin working at the Cleveland Clinic, and "with him came a wind of change that was to reshape cardiac surgery forever," researcher Gabriella Captur wrote in a memento for the late scientist in 2004.
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In 1967, the surgeon performed a historic operation on a 51-year-old woman with a blockage in her right coronary artery. "Attaching her to a heart-lung machine, he stopped her heart and used a vein from her leg to redirect blood flow around the blockage," according to the Google doodle blog. Favaloro's refined procedure would go on to save countless lives.
While he rightfully earned multiple honors and accolades for his work, Favaloro is remembered to be quite humble, giving praise to the many individuals involved. “I do not talk in the form ‘I,’” he said in a 1992 interview. “At the Cleveland Clinic, we were a team.”
Four years after the big operation, Favaloro returned to his home country and opened the Favaloro Foundation, where he prioritized caring for patients based on medical needs, not how much they could afford to pay for care.
With time, however, the foundation began struggling financially. This, along with the death of his wife, resulted in “the saddest period of my life,” Favaloro wrote in a letter to the editor of La Nacion on July 29, 2000. “In the most recent times, I have been turned into a beggar.”
According to Al Jazeera, the letter argued the state-owned medical centers in Argentina still owed the foundation $18 million.
On Aug. 1, 2000, at 77, Favoloro was found dead with a chest wound and a gun nearby. His death was ruled a suicide.
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