The Dutch Sailor

In 2006, as soon as I knew he was still coming to the university campus, I could not resist to contact him. He was an extremely private person, and usually he did not receive many visitors, but my invitation to participate in the course of Medical Parasitology at the School of Medicine (Andes University, Bogotá-Colombia), allowed me to approach him.  Once his office, he gently offered me a bench that he kept under the desk. It began the journey, many countries that I will never visit and countless stories.  He never let me to record or to take notes. So after a conversation, I rushed to my office trying to remember as many details as possible: kidnapped by guerrilla, trapped by the high tide inside a cave in Bahia Solano (Colombia Pacific coast) while he was bitten on the face by bats, sentenced to death in north Africa for carrying turtles with sacred sand, among other; besides the myth generated around him to self-inoculate microorganisms to serve as transportation media.

He told me about the Tyrolean origin of his paternal family with sailors, painters and doctors, whose last name is related to the Praying Mantis in the Austro-Bavarian language. His paternal grandfather, from which he inherited the same name, fought in the World War I and died of malaria in a trip to Indonesia. The body buried in Onrust Island (Palau). He found the grave because it had a stone with the initials “CJM”. He kept the stone and later gave it to his father. I also knew about his maternal grandmother, a descendant of the 17^th century French Gypsy Queen. He saw his father every 7 or 8 years, a businessman who traveled to his bauxite mines in Bosnia at the mercy of wolves’ attacks, that carried margarine for the first time to the United States or that opened an import business at Wall Street. His mother of French origin, but born in the Netherlands, a dentist with whom migrated to Java when he was 9 years old.

Born in Vienna, he had a double citizenship: Austrian and Dutch. Soon after the World War II, he declined the former one. He was a volunteer in the military campaign to expel the Japanese from Indonesia. However, a bullet injury in his left calf, from which he completely recovered, allowed him to have a Dutch Crown indulgence to withdraw from the army.  He returned to the Netherlands at age of 18 to begin the medical training. Among Antwerp, Batavia, Brussels, London and Utrecht earned undergraduate degrees in medicine and biology; specializations in parasitology, medical entomology, tropical medicine, health policies and medical mycology; a master's degree in applied parasitology and a doctorate in biology.

His first approach to Colombia was at the University of London because his professor PCC Garnham had contact with the Colombian virologist Carlos Sanmartín Barberi However, after an offer of his professor to work in Sierra Leone, he finally decided to travel to Latin America. He first arrived to El Salvador in 1962, and then he was recommended by doctor Pablo Barreto to work in entomology at the Universidad del Valle in Cali. From Colombia he heard that it was a dangerous a place, so he used two strategies to ward off curious and thieves from his home at Parque del Perro (Dog Park): a notice on the door indicating that exotic and poisonous animals were bought; and to walk along the park with a snake around the neck. His arrival to the Andes University in Bogota was partly due to the invitation of Hernando Groot Liévano MD, who mentioned him about the opening of a new medical school, for this purpose since 1957, the university created the pre-medical courses.

More than four decades of continuous work to gather his collection of bats and birds' eggs; for his studies on trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis and toxoplasmosis, and descriptions of new species of birds, snakes, bats, fungi and parasites. He created a research center in tropical medicine where he trained several generations of alumni including his appreciated students and friends Nhora Rodriguez Sanchez, Max Grol, Marco Fidel Suarez and Felipe Guhl.

At his 80 years old, still tall with gray hair and tanned white skin, I remember him entering for the first time to lecture at the Medical Parasitology course. It was a special occasion for him, so much that he dressed up with navy blue blazer and a dark blue tie with small drawings resembling insects. He told me to detail the designs that were mosquitos: “Look well, the wings are spread”; which is typical of the Lutzomya, the mosquito who transmit leishmaniasis. Well, there he was, with his heavily accented Spanish, spreading his knowledge and personal experience in tropical medicine; 43 years later for which he was initially contacted.

Now you will guess whom they are honoring when you read about or watch an image of Tremajoannes genus (turtle) or a mosquito, frog, bat or parasite from marinkellei specie, Cornelis Johannes Marinkelle Vienna, July 1925 - Bogota, January 2012.

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