Florencio Durán

Florencio Durán Bernales was a Chilean physician, lawyer and politician who lived from 1893 to 1978. Born in Rancagua on 11 January 1893, he studied at the Instituto Nacional in Santiago and then at the University of Chile, where he qualified as a physician and surgeon in 1917 with a thesis titled Surgical Tuberculosis. He worked as a physician for the Seguro Obrero and spent nine years as administrator, and also director, of the San Juan de Dios Hospital of Rancagua. He later became president of the Association of Hospital Physicians. A member of the Radical Party, which he led from 1940, he served as President of the Senate of Chile from 1941 to 1944 and was a newspaper owner and a member of several Rotary clubs.