Reviewed by: Los enfermos en la España barroca y el pluralismo médico: espacios, estrategias y actitudes by Carolin Schmitz Allyson M. Poska Carolin Schmitz. Los enfermos en la España barroca y el pluralismo médico: espacios, estrategias y actitudes. Estudios sobre la ciencia 71. Madrid: CSIC, 2018. 411 pp. Ill. €37.50 (978-84-00-10391-2). Scholars have often argued that the increased professionalization of medicine during the early modern period negatively impacted the doctor/patient relationship. However, following the lead of much recent scholarship, Schmitz demonstrates that the presumed hierarchy of medical professionals over patients and of licensed doctors over other practitioners is much more complex than we have previously understood. Her patient-centered argument returns agency to both patients and an array of unregulated medical providers. Schmitz demonstrates an impressive command of the scholarship in both English and Spanish. However, what really sets this work apart is the array of primary sources upon which she relies. Schmitz uses Inquisition records from the tribunals of Cuenca and Toledo, especially cases involving witchcraft and superstitious cures, criminal cases against charlatans, a picaresque novel, and a cache of letters mostly from other doctors but also some patients to Dr. Juan Muñoz y Peralta dating from 1709 to 1721. Muñoz y Peralta was an eminent physician, a founder of Seville's royal academy of medicine and surgery, and surgeon at the court of Philip V until he was arrested by the Inquisition for judaizing. The Inquisition confiscated the [End Page 138] letters in his possession but for reasons that are unclear, did not return them after Muñoz y Peralta was released three years later. Thus, this treasure trove remains in the Inquisition section at the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid. Schmitz expertly mines them for details about the medical experiences of patients, their relationships with various practitioners, and the relationship between the royal physician and other healers. Structuring her chapters around the sites where healing took place and the design of a "therapeutic itinerary" (pp. 60–64), Schmitz begins with the home as the primary site of medical intervention. She vividly brings the consumers of early modern medicine to life. Despite the trope of patient submission to medical authorities, Schmitz notes that many were quite demanding in asserting the urgency of their cases. Elite patients definitely expected that doctors and even the royal physician would be at their beck and call. Not surprisingly, when patients were dissatisfied with their care, they were adept at engaging the medical marketplace, healer-hopping in search of relief. From the perspective of the patient, there was no clear hierarchy of medical success or knowledge. For a person in pain or discomfort, whatever worked was the best option. The next chapter explores the community as a site of medical interactions. Although Schmitz admits that the dichotomy between home and community was far from rigid, she is able to create a sense of therapeutic space outside the home. People spoke to friends, neighbors, and relatives about their experiences and the successes and failures of particular healers. Patients sought advice and relief in the shops of barber-surgeons, pharmacies, hospitals, as well as spaces where both licensed and unlicensed healers set up shop like inns and taverns. The community could also be the source of illness, as when witchcraft or spells caused health problems or impotence. Early modern Spaniards were remarkably mobile, and this ready mobility is evident in the decisions of patients to seek therapy far away. Schmitz articulates three main reasons that people travelled for cures—dissatisfaction with what was available at home, seeking a particular healer, and going to a place known for its healing properties, like hot springs, chapels, and shrines. Indeed, patients were willing to travel long distances, sometimes hundreds of kilometers, to a try the curative properties of a thermal bath or saintly relic. For an elite few, travel across Spain's difficult terrain could be avoided by seeking advice through Schmitz's final healing site, "virtual space" (p. 307) or medical consult via correspondence. Not surprisingly, it is in the correspondence with Muñoz y Peralta that the medical hierarchy was most pronounced. Los...