 He completed a degree in medicine from the University of Haiti in 1934, and served as staff physician at several local hospitals.He spent a year at the University of Michigan studying public health and in 1943, became active in a United States-sponsored campaign to control the spread of contagious tropical diseases, helping the poor to fight typhus, yaws, malaria and other tropical diseases that had ravaged Haiti for years.His patients affectionately called him "Papa Doc", a moniker that he used throughout his life.