Romana

On November 26, the University of Navarra held a ceremony in honor of Professor Eduardo Ortiz de Landázuri, medical internist at the University of Navarra Hospital and Professor in the School of Medicine, who died in 1985. The ceremony, on the centennial of his birth, was presided over by the Rector of the University, Professor Angel J. Gómez-Montoro, who recalled “his passionate love for the university.” The Rector said that “his magnanimity and his love for the university are a true spur to us to continue working ardently to carry forward this great university project.”

The homage began with an address by Manuel Pérez Miranda, Professor of Medical Pathology at the University of Badajoz, on “The Evolution of Internal Medicine in the Past Fifty Years.”

A round table moderated by Dr. Jesús Prieto, professor at the University of Navarre and a specialist in the Department of Internal Medicine, was then held. Taking part were Dr. Manuel Muñoz, Head of Internal Medicine for the Hospital Complex of León; Dr. Jesús Florez, Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Cantabria; and two professors from the University of Navarra, Andrés Purroy, specialist in Nephrology, and Gonzalo Herranz, Professor of Bioethics.

Dr. Manuel Muñoz said that Eduardo Ortiz de Landázuri was “a true promoter of all that today is the University of Navarra’s Medical School. He encouraged all who were at his side to work with disinterested dedication, placing the patient above all else.”

According to Dr. Jesús Florez, generosity was his great legacy as a teacher. This gave him “a passion for medicine, for the sick, for us his students, for science, and for clinical research."

Professor Gonzalo Herranz said that Dr. Ortiz’ main concern “was to foster in himself, in those he worked with and in his students intellectual humility: a recognition that their diagnoses could always have been better or more complete. And he wanted this humility to spur them to continue studying, not just in order to know more, but to serve their patients better.”

Eduardo Ortiz de Landázuri was born in Segovia in 1910. He came to the new School of Medicine at the University of Navarra and the University Hospital in 1958, and received many awards during his long years of service to medicine. In 1983 he left teaching and worked for the Association of Friends of the University. A short time later he was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor that resulted in his death in 1985. Thirteen years later, his cause of canonization was begun in Pamplona.