Antonio Jiménez Suárez

Antonio Jiménez Suárez was a physician in Las Palmas and the first president of the Colegio de Médicos de las Canarias Orientales. His documented career encompassed municipal medical care, the organisation of the medical profession and participation in scientific societies. He was one of the founders of El Museo Canario. The Provincial Historical Archive’s inventory and the history of the medical college place his death in 1903. The sources consulted do not establish his date or place of birth.

The municipal records describe his appointment as a second-ranking municipal physician in 1891, following the vacancy caused by the death of Luis Navarro Pérez. His contract lasted eight years and provided a salary of 1,250 pesetas. Another file brings together monthly reports of his services between July 1898 and May 1899. These cover visits, prescriptions, examinations, diagnoses, certificates and vaccinations for the city’s poor. The archival description documents specific aspects of his work, alongside the formal position that he held in the municipal medical service.

In 1901 he appears among the municipal physicians requesting renewal of their contracts, together with Carlos Navarro Ruiz, José Champsaur Sicilia and Federico León García. His death again left the position vacant. The inventory also records the temporary appointment of Enrique Morón Garnica as a consequence of that vacancy. These records provide a sequence for his municipal employment without requiring the attribution of individual clinical interventions that have not been examined directly in the original files.

His involvement in medical associations preceded the creation of the college. Pedro C. Quintana Andrés’s historical study identifies him as treasurer of the medical academy organised in 1885 under the presidency of Domingo José Navarro. The same study includes him, alongside Federico León and Cristóbal Quevedo, among the physicians who financed the Casa de Salud established in 1892 in Plaza de Santo Domingo. This initiative sought to attract patients and contribute to the development of Las Palmas as a health resort. It was a shared enterprise, rather than an institution founded by Jiménez alone.

While the Colegio de Médicos de las Canarias Orientales was being organised, he chaired its provisional organising committee, with Casimiro Cabrera as secretary. The census and elections of 1901 led to the first governing board: Jiménez received fourteen votes for the presidency. The organisation brought together physicians from different islands within its eastern jurisdiction. Its institutional history associates his death with the subsequent decline in the college’s activity. His biography therefore combines medical care, professional organisation and collaboration with scientific institutions, the latter also evidenced by his status as a founder of the museum.