Luis Calandre Ibáñez
(Cartagena, 1890 - Madrid, 1961)

Luís Calandre, a graduated in medicine who worked at the Laboratory of Histopathology of the Nervous System, headed by Achúcarro, in the early 1910s. In 1912, he obtained a grant from the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios that allowed him to study heart histology in Berlin and then electrocardiography in Paris. In 1914, he was appointed general physician at the Residencia de Estudiantes and director of its Laboratory of Microscopic Anatomy, where he carried out a remarkable work teaching the micrographic technique and the microscopic structure of tissues and organs as basis for the study of physiology and pathology.

The year 1920 marked the zenith in Calandre’s career. He became member of the Real Academia de Medicina, published Anatomía y fisiología clínicas del corazón, and was the editor of the first issue of its periodical, Archivos de Cardiología y Hematología, in collaboration with Gustavo Pittaluga.

Calandre had published a booklet on electrocardiography in 1918,
a work he developed and published a few years later: Trastornos del ritmo cardíaco: diagnóstico y tratamiento (1925). That year, he started working as a cardiologist in the Central Hospital of the Red Cross. He became actively engaged in its modernization, as member and vice-president of its board.

He was loyal to the Republican government during the Civil War and established a clinic for wounded soldiers at the Residencia de Estudiantes. After the war, he was purged after a long trial and was banned from practicing medicine. He became part of the bitter internal exile.