Calle del Doctor Gómez Ulla
The street bears the name of Mariano Gómez Ulla (Santiago de Compostela, 1877 – Madrid, 1945), a military surgeon who transformed battlefield surgical care during the wars in Africa. The Central Defence Hospital in Carabanchel, where he worked from 1911, has also borne his name since 1946.
The calle del Doctor Gómez Ulla recalls a military surgeon who changed the way operations were carried out in the thick of battle. Mariano Gómez Ulla was born in Santiago de Compostela on 6 November 1877 and rose through the ranks to become Inspector General of the Army Medical Corps in 1943.
His best-remembered invention seems drawn from an adventure novel: a mountain surgical hospital that could be dismantled and loaded onto 55 or 60 mules to carry the operating theatre to the front. It was already in use in the Rif in April 1922, where he also introduced spinal anaesthesia in the field and designed the Spanish army’s first diagnosis-and-evacuation card, a forerunner of modern triage.
The Civil War nearly cost him his life: arrested in 1938 and sentenced to death, he was finally freed in a prisoner exchange at the end of that year. He died in Madrid on 24 November 1945 and, barely seven months later, the Carabanchel military hospital took his name.
Sources (7)
- Mariano Gómez Ulla — Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
- Contribución a la Ciencia del General Médico D. Mariano Gómez Ulla (1877-1945) — Sanidad Militar (Scielo ISCIII)
- Hospital Central de la Defensa Gómez Ulla — Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
- Las dos mujeres que salvaron la vida al doctor Gómez Ulla — Guerra en Madrid
- La trampa casi mortal del espionaje soviético al doctor Gómez Ulla — Guerra en Madrid
- Gómez Ulla, Mariano — Diccionario Biográfico de la Medicina Española (biomedes.es)
- Calle del Doctor Gómez Ulla — Wikidata (callejero oficial Ayuntamiento de Madrid)