The Life and Legacy of Jayme Gurza: Pioneer Surgeon in Mexico (1764–1839)

Jayme (or Jaime) Gurza, surgeon and medical doctor, was born Jacques Thomas Jean Gurça in January 1764 to Vincent Gurça and Françoise Vigo at Saint-Laurents-de-Cerdans, in what is now the department of Pyrénées-Orientales, Languedoc-Roussillon, France, an area briefly captured by Spain during the War of the Pyrenees. The parish registry of his 1806 marriage to María Micaela Vello y San Martín in Chihuahua, Mexico, lists him as a Spaniard, native of the Kingdom of Castile. The couple had at least six children between 1807 and 1822, including María Carlota del Rosario, who was born in San Antonio in 1813 during the town’s occupation by the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition.

Gurza was serving as second assistant surgeon in the Spanish army on campaign in Roussillon in 1793 when he received a royal appointment as surgeon to the military hospital in Coahuila. He arrived in Veracruz the following year and proceeded to Chihuahua, where he remained for more than a decade. In 1803 Spain became the first country to organize an empire-wide vaccination campaign, the Real Expedición Marítima de la Vacuna (or Royal Seaborne Vaccination Expedition), using the cowpox method developed by Edward Jenner. In 1804 Gurza organized a smallpox vaccination program for the Provincias Internas. His efforts in conducting vaccinations and training representatives from throughout the Provincias Internas to carry the vaccine to their settlements was recognized in Mexico City’s Gazeta de México, which lauded his efforts and published a summary of his findings.

Commandant General Nemesio Salcedo appointed Gurza, who was misidentified by Carlos Castañeda in Volume VI of Our Catholic Heritage in Texas as Jaime Guerra, to serve as surgeon and doctor at the military hospital in San Antonio in May 1807. Contrary to what Pat Ireland Nixon stated in his history of medicine in San Antonio, Gurza took over in September 1807 from Frederico Zerván who had been in charge since late 1805, when the hospital was established on an interim basis in the secularized San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo). Although a military medical officer, Gurza also attended to the needs of the civilian and ecclesiastical population during his tenure in San Antonio, including fighting an outbreak of influenza and organizing a smallpox vaccination campaign in San Antonio in spring 1808. Among other improvements made during the first years of his tenure, he organized a hospital pharmacy that he attempted to keep well-stocked, and he successfully lobbied for repairs to the rooms at the Alamo being used for the hospital and pharmacy; repairs were completed by early 1810.

Gurza was in San Antonio during both episodes of rebellion during the Mexican War of Independence. Arrested along with other European Spaniards during the Casas Revolt, he was jailed at the hospital, where he continued attending to military patients and running the pharmacy. He subsequently testified as to the fitness to stand trial of the rebellion’s leader Juan de las Casas. Gurza was among the Spaniards and loyal creoles arrested when the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition occupied San Antonio at the beginning of April 1813, but he escaped the fate of Governor Manuel Salcedo and other Spanish officers and prominent individuals who were summarily executed. Having been among a group of loyalists released from detention, he fled San Antonio in early May and made his way to the royalist lines. He returned to San Antonio probably with Joaquín Arredondo’s army, which defeated the insurgents at the battle of Medina in August. During his last months in Texas, he testified in at least two cases involving individuals accused of treason to the crown, and he also had the misfortune of becoming involved with Antonio López de Santa Anna, a junior officer in Arredondo’s army, whom Gurza later accused of defrauding him by forging another officer’s signature on a promissory note.

Gurza left San Antonio for the last time at the end of April 1814. He was serving in the military hospital of Monclova when he was granted retirement in April 1819 and the following year moved his family to Durango. According to the Diccionario Porrúa he was one of the Spaniards expelled from Mexico under the expulsion law of 1827, but he returned to Durango in 1835, where he died in 1839. His family became prominent in state and national affairs, including a namesake grandson who served as secretary of communications and undersecretary of the treasury in Francisco Madero’s government.