The appointment is on Calle Serrano in Madrid, one metro stop from a hospital with as much tradition as the Gregorio Marañón. His shadow, although distant, is inferred from the offices of the Santander Bank Foundation, wide open today with a double mission: to present the new volume of the Fundamental History Collection and to attack like a battering ram against the Black Legend that flies over rojigualda history. If last year the first essay in the saga shed light on the education of monarchs, now it has been the turn of sixteenth-century Spanish medicine, among the most revolutionary of the time.
Because if; Although it has been fought with a fountain pen and inkwell for decades, there is still a lot of dust to clean up so that stories like those of our health can shine. The perfect duster is data. «An example: in America the first network of public hospitals in the world was created in charge of the Hispanic Monarchy. And it was at the same moment that colonization started. The one who speaks is the historian Gonzalo Gomez Garciaand he does it proudly, with his essay, titled ‘Heal bodies and save souls‘, in the hand.
The witness is picked up by the person in charge of the Foundation in the history area, Francisco Javier Exposito: «We wanted to put an end to the cliché that the Spanish Empire was backward in medicine and science with this book, which is accompanied by seven podcasts with data and interviews».
After an hour of talk, the conclusion is that talking about healers and leeches in the empire of Carlos V and Felipe II is just as ridiculous as talking about the massive burning of witches. «The reality is that the medical situation in the kingdoms and on the other side of the Atlantic was terrible, but the advances of characters like the Cardinal Cisneros they changed the situation,” says Luis Alberto de Cuenca, an academic at the Royal Academy of History and today co-presenter of the play. He is not without reason. The expert brings up names like Francisco Diaz de Alcalafather of modern urology already in the 16th century, and stresses that, in 1640, “Spain was the only European power that had ten universities in the viceroyalties of America.”
black legend
But the revolution did not come out of nowhere. It took a century for a model to alleviate catastrophes such as the Black Death was found. The solution came from Italy in the 15th century and it consisted of focusing on the human being. A Spain orphaned of doctors drank from that humanist medicine. “The majority were Jews and had been expelled from the peninsula in 1492,” says Gómez.
Cardinal Cisneros turned necessity into a virtue and forged a teaching system at the University of Alcalá that promoted the dignity of the sick and their recovery for society in body and mind. “Hospitals were professionalized, they stopped being charity centers run by friars without training, and students without resources received scholarships,” he adds.
The figures are sovereign; between 1523 and 1545, 270 students acquired the medical baccalaureate in Alcalá. “An outrageous”, according to De Cuenca. All of them nurtured the hospitals, founded by dozens on the peninsula and on the other side of the pond. In practice, the Spanish Empire therefore had a university and hospital network that unabashedly surpassed those of all the colonial powers combined. And not only in number, but in means and mentality. “Out of respect for women, who were cared for in specialized rooms, nurses were trained to treat them,” reveals Gómez. In addition, he recalls that doctors of the time such as Juan Alonso de Fontecha They already affirmed that “women do the same as men, or even more”.
Treatise on Dioscorides, studied by students in the 16th century
The greatest qualitative leap was experienced in the New World. There, the Hispanic Monarchy raised the pillars of what is currently public health. “Hospitals were founded because medicine was very expensive. The price of a syrup was equivalent to approximately 10% of the annual salary of an average citizen”, completes the author. During the reign of Felipe II, the American healthcare network was further strengthened. The monarch sent lawyers like Juan de Valdivia to Santo Domingo to confirm that the funds were adequately used in education and medicine and attended to the requests of the viceroys in both fields. “The one from Peru asked him to found another hospital in the area to return to the natives what they had paid as taxes,” he completes.
Time is running out, not the stories to tell. In fact, a whole morning would not be enough to cover all those included in the book. Gómez, however, ends his presentation with a myth that particularly stings him: that of the Spanish perpetrating a genocide against the natives: “It was the diseases and, if they had not brought them, it would have been any other power.” It should not be forgotten.