Health and Medicine in Hapsburg Spain: Agents, Practices, Representations, Medical History Supplement No. 29 (London: The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 2009). ISBN 0-85484-128-8 (HC). 5 B&W illustrations, v + 158 pp. by Teresa Huguet-Termes

Abstract

148 BOOK REVIEWS in a lively and engaging style, this study will appeal to both early modernists and medical historians alike. MICHAEL PICKERING UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE Teresa Huguet-Termes, Jon Arrizabalaga, and Harold J. Cook, eds, Health and Medicine in Hapsburg Spain: Agents, Practices, Representations, Medical History Supplement No. 29 (London: The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 2009). ISBN 0-85484-128-8 (HC). 5 B&W illustrations, v + 158 pp. As Harold J. Cook argues in the introduction to this volume, for too long English language readers have had a limited view of Spanish science, and little has been available to English speakers. The editors organised a conference in 2006 from which these papers (and others invited subsequently) stem. Not all the authors are specialists of medicine, but together their papers provide insight into Spanish medicine in a variety of ways. MaríaLuzLópezTerradasetsoutthesystemsofcontroldeveloped in Valencia to regulate practice, reveals the extent of medical pluralism, and finishes with a case study of Llorenç Coçar, named protomédico y soprevisitador real [royal physician and supervisor in chief] in 1589. He was practising chemical medicine with support from Philip II but was charged by colleagues at the medical faculty for developing Paracelsian medicines at home and overcharging. She reads this as an attempt to limit crown control of the practice and licensing of official medicine and argues that Coçar’s case highlights both the extent and support of pluralism, as well as the forces of regulation and their varied concerns. MarReyBuenoexploresPhilipII’sinterestinsecrets,distillations, and other alchemical ideas, which have previously been seen as attempts to acquire gold and to preserve his life. A more detailed analysis, she argues, suggests a deeper intellectual curiosity as he firstly employed diverse specialists across different cities, and later established a laboratory at El Escorial. Rey Bueno sees this not as an occult practice by the Counter-Reformation king, but as a natural interest in the world, which was directed towards outcomes for his Empire. María Tausiet explores the distinctions between witches and Health & History ● 12/2 ● 2010 149 those healers who claimed divine healing power. Her analysis suggests that secular court trials produced harsher outcomes, the majority legimitising the cases as witchcraft that came before them, whereas ecclesiastical courts allowed more investigation and were generally less willing to accept the notion of witchcraft generally. An increasing number of saludadores [charismatic healers] were however being prosecuted, not for the principles of healing that underpinned their activities, but for forging official documentation. Opinion on saludadores varied within the Church, which upheld the possibility that such healers might exist by granting licenses, although such faith healing could never be fully controlled. In her chapter, Teresa Huguet-Termes explores hospital developments in Madrid, which was made the capital in 1561. She argues that improvements to health care were used as political tools for change by the dynasty, and that the second half of the sixteenth century saw new charitable endeavours and a slow move towards medical specialisation. Although crown legislation focussed on the royal hospital and sick paupers, Huguet-Termes argues that by allowing healthy paupers to beg, Spain’s authorities were upholding key Counter-Reformation Catholic principles and giving alms-givers the opportunity to practice individual charity. Moving to literary presentations, Mónica Bolufer examines humanist physician Juan Huarte de San Juan’s Examen de ingenios para las sciencas [The Examination of Men’s Wits] (1575) which argued that the height of achievement was to perfect characteristics distinct to each sex. This mirrored notions of different and essential moral, intellectual qualities and social functions of the sexes to be found in popular literature. In the case of breastfeeding advice books, Bolufer notes that authors were sensitive to social class distinctions; although they encouraged breastfeeding, they were also aware of the social tensions among the elite that render it less likely. She concludes that whereas sixteenth- and seventeenth-century physicians justified contemporary social practices, by the eighteenth century maternal breastfeeding gained prominence among medical writers as new values towards privacy, family, and domesticity emerged. In the book’s final chapter, Jon Arrizabalaga situates Roderigo De Castro’s intellectual agenda within the context of...