Daniel Alcides Carrion

Topics: Peruvian people

Daniel Alcides Carrion was a Peruvian medical student after whom Carrion's disease is named. He described the disease in the course of what proved to be a fatal experiment upon himself in 1885, in order to demonstrate definitively the cause of the illness. He was inoculated by close friends with blood from a wart between the eyes of 14 year old boy. His aim was to prove a link between the acute blood stage of Oroya fever with that of the later chronic form of the disease Verruga Peruana typified by numerous red wart-like dermal nodules. Neither the cause nor mode of transmission of Oroya fever was then known and, furthermore, the relationship between the acute and chronic forms of the disease was not proven. After his death from the disease, his friend was arrested and tried for murder.

Daniel Alcides Carrion is buried in a mausoleum on the premises of the National Hospital Dos de mayo in Lima.

The Daniel Alcides Carrion Province in the Pasco Region.