Tomás Cerviá Cabrera (Santa Cruz de la Palma, 1902 – Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1962) studied at the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Secondary School, in Ireneo González square.
Doctor of Medicine at the San Carlos University of Madrid in 1926, with the qualification of Outstanding “cum laude”.
In 1930 he would be appointed tenured academic of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Tenerife and president of the Medicine Section of the same.
The following year he was appointed doctor of the Antituberculosis Clinic of Tenerife, in calle San Lucas, obtaining the position of director in 1932.
In 1944, he inaugurated and directed the Ofra Tuberculosis Sanatorium, transferring the 90 patients who were in the Civil Hospital there.
In 1949, as Head of the Internal Medicine services of the Civil Hospital, he would create the Regional Center for the Fight Against Cancer. Four years later he would found the Provincial Board of the Spanish Association against Cancer, getting the Island Council of Tenerife to bring the first cobalt pump (Siemens), with which in 1961 the Tele Cobaltotherapy Unit would be opened.
In 1955 he would be appointed director of the Institute of Physiology and Regional Pathology of Tenerife, of which he had been his inspiration.
Associate professor at the National School of Physiology of Madrid and honorary professor at the National School of Thoracic Medicine.
Founding Member of the International Union of Bronchial Pathology (Paris) and of the eight Physiology societies existing in Spain.
Numerary member of the Spanish societies of Cardiology, Endocrinology, Physiological Sciences, Diabetes and Rheumatology.
Honorary member of the Societies: Venezuelan Physiology and Pneumonia, Ecuadorian Thoracic Specialists of Guayaquil, Internal Medicine of Buenos Aires, Physiology of Havana and Physiology of Córdoba (Argentina).
Corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Madrid, of the American Trudeau Society and of the American College of the Chest Physicians, of which he would become Governor.
Member of the Spanish Society of Medical Writers and Founder of the Spanish Society of the History of Medicine.
He directed the magazines Médica de Canarias and Práctica Médica.
I publish the books The Lesson of Alexis Carrel and Humanistic Medicine.
He was distinguished with the Commendation of the Spanish Civil Health Order (1948), and the Santa Cruz de La Palma City Council named him Favorite Son and awarded him the City’s Gold Medal (1960).
