Do you know why the Metge González is important? A street between Carrer Major and Placeta del Convent bears his name, you surely know it. Find out who this character was and what it meant for Xàbia.
Jaime González Castellano was born in Xàbia in 1832. His basic studies started here but he continued them in Valencia, and he graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the Central University of Madrid. He worked in the Military Health Corps assisting soldiers wounded in the war in Africa (1859-1860) and in 1870 he held the first free chair of ophthalmology that was created in Valencia. But from 1872 he began to dedicate himself entirely to working with the lepers of the Marina Alta, so he is truly remembered.
Leprosy was an endemic disease in this area: the San Lazaro disease, the name by which leprosy was also known, was a pandemic in Europe in the late XNUMXth and early XNUMXth centuries. This was even more serious in the Mediterranean, and more specifically in the northern regions of Alicante and southern Valencia.
At that time, Xàbia's doctor Jaime González wrote medical articles in the Gandía Magazine, with which he intended to demonstrate the increase in the disease, the abandonment in which the sick lived and the urgency of having a suitable place to treat them. This experience made the founders of the Fontilles Sanatorium, the Jesuit Father Ferris and the lawyer Joaquín Ballester, consult him to establish the sanatorium. Jaime González pointed out the medical conditions that a place had to meet to welcome lepers. The Fontilles Sanatorium was inaugurated in 1909.
El metge gonzalez he became Deputy Delegate for Medicine of the Dénia party and Director of Maritime Health of the port of Xàbia. He died in Xàbia in 1917, at the age of 85.
Xàbia.com he has extracted this information from the "Abridged Javiense Biographical Dictionary", and from "Jaime González Castellano: The man who dreamed Fontilles", both by the author Juan Bautista Codina Bas.
If you want to meet more characters that give name to the streets of Xàbia, check here:
