Luis Felipe Mencía Papers

Identity elements

Name and location of repository

Level of description

Collection

Title

Luis Felipe Mencía Papers

Date(s)

  • 1907-1990 (Creation)

Extent

1 Box

Name of creator

Biographical history

Luis Felipe Mencía was a medical doctor, professor, and author.

Mencía was born in Havana, Cuba, on April 22, 1922. He went to the Ruston Academy and to the Institute of Secondary Education of Havana from 1927 through 1939. He attended the School of Medicine of the University of Havana and obtained his medical degree in 1946.

Mencía did his first internship at the General Calixto García University Hospital (straight surgical), in Havana, Cuba, from 1947 to 1948. From 1949 to 1953 he acted as assistant resident in surgery at Yale University Hospital.

Dr. Mencía was an important member of different medical societies, in Cuba and the United States, since 1951. He received several academic appointments starting at Yale University School of Medicine, where he served as instructor in thoracic surgery in 1952, and at the University of Havana School of Medicine, from 1954 to 1960, in the same role. He left Cuba as an exile in the early 1960s and was appointed as a fellow in pediatric surgery at the Variety Children's Hospital, Miami, Florida, 1961-1964; clinical instructor in surgery in the Division of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine, 1963-1968; and in 1968 he became clinical assistant professor of surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine. From 1970 to 1987, Mencía was a senior attending pediatric surgeon at the Variety Children’s Hospital, and in 1988, he was appointed surgeon emeritus at the Variety Miami Children’s Hospital.

Luis Felipe Mencía published 20 medical articles (Spanish and English) on thoracic surgery, pediatric surgery and general surgery. These articles were published in important medical journals in Cuba and in the United States, from 1946 to 1977. His last publication was a booklet titled “Recuerdos de la Cirugía en Cuba” published in 1990 in Miami, Florida. This booklet documents the history of surgery in Cuba during the decades of 1920 to 1960.

Luis F. Mencía died in Miami on July 18, 1990.

Content and structure elements

Scope and content

The Luis Felipe Mencía papers contain correspondence, clippings about medicine and hospitals, as well as the Cuban Medical Conventions in Exile etc., one illustration of the Hospital Mercedes in Cuba, a roster and invitations to various events of the Cuban Society of Surgery, and pamphlets about surgery in Cuba.  It also contains historical issues of periodical publications related to medicine in Cuba and Cuban physicians.  The most important materials of this collection are a lecture offered by Mencía at the special session of the Ninth International Cuban Medical Association Congress, Miami, 1987, and the manuscript of Dr. Mencía's book: Recuerdos de la Cirugía en Cuba,  published in Miami in 1990.  In this collection we also find a photocopy of one speech by Dr. D. González Marmol.

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Conditions of access and use elements

Conditions governing access

This collection is open for research.

Physical access

Technical access

Conditions governing reproduction

Requests to publish or display materials from this collection require written permission from the rights owner. Please, contact chc@miami.edu for more information.

Preferred citation: Luis Felipe Mencía Papers, Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami Libraries, Coral Gables, Florida.

Languages of the material

  • English
  • French
  • Spanish

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Finding aids

Generated finding aid

Acquisition and appraisal elements

Custodial history

Immediate source of acquisition

Gift of Teresa Mencía, 1990.

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General note

Other Information:

Rights Statement: The text of this webpage is available for modification and reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts).

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Archivist's note

Finding Aid by Esperanza de Varona and Myriam de la Rocha, November 1993. Revisions to the finding aid by Beata Bergen, May 2011. Finding Aid published in Archon by Beata Bergen, May 2011. Updated by Rebeca Gonzalez, May 2021.

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