Spanish Medicine

Political conflicts between religious and secular authorities carried over to medicine. In Europe, the medical school at Salamanca in the kingdom of León had become the most prestigious in 1252. It relied upon Arab translations of newly discovered works by Greek and Roman physicians.

Hippocrates and Galen believed the body contained four fluids that must be kept in balance. Each had specific qualities. The humors were considered extensions of the natural world where each plant embodied one of the traits.

Diseases were associated with each humor and treated by stimulating the opposing traits. Phlegm was cold and moist, yellow bile hot and dry. Thus, if one caught a common cold, one kept warm and drank hot liquids to warm the interior. Chicken soup or tea and honey is used today.

Blood was hot and moist, black bile cold and dry. Rhazes associated smallpox with blood. Individuals were most vulnerable at the age when the warm blood of childhood was changing to the cool blood of adults.

Once smallpox became an established disease in Mexico, it recurred about every fifteen to twenty years. At least fourteen colonists from Mexico City had pock marked faces. Most of the seven men were over 20 years old, most of the girls younger than 13.

When medicine failed to cure, the church offered an alternative. It argued diseases were caused by some invasion engineered by Satan that had to be removed. The most famous case in the years of the Reconquest was Charles II, king of Spain.

As was mentioned in the post of 8 March 2015, his biological condition was beyond the experience of any physician. Even today, medicine could no more than use dialysis when his kidneys began failing. It couldn’t change his genetics, and probably could do nothing to improve his sperm.

By the late 1690s, his failure to produce an heir was an international concern. Madrid was split between those lobbying for collateral branches in France and in Austria. In 1698, a Dominican, Pedro Matilla, seized power from the wife of Charles, Mariana of Neuburg. The archbishop of Toledo supported the French claims, and so maneuvered his replacement with Froilan Díaz, another Dominican.

The production of an heir was placed in his hands. He assumed the king had been possessed, and asked for help from Antonio Álvarez de Argüelles. At the time Argüelles was exorcizing demons from nuns in Oviedo in Asturias. It was hoped they could tell them who had bewitched the king.

The first demon consulted through the nuns said, indeed, the king had been bewitched when he was fourteen, just at he reached the age of legal maturity. It added, the spell was prepared by his mother and given him in a cup of chocolate. The solution was to oil and purge Charles.

Consultations continued in Oviedo, but the demons gave conflicting answers. One had the audacity to blame Mariana. The Austrian emperor, Leopold, sent his own exorcist, Mauro Tenda, who worked over Charles. Mariana was the sister of his third wife, Eleonor Magdalene of Neuburg.

The treatments ended when Mariana plotted her return to power by using the Inquisition. Tenda was arrested in January of 1700, and Díaz dismissed. The king died in November.

Notes:
Lea, Henry Charles. A History of The Inquisition of Spain, volume 2, 1922, on the exorcisms of Charles.

McCaa, Robert. "The Peopling of Mexico from Origins to Revolution," in A Population History of North America, edited by Michael R. Haines and Richard H. Steckel, 2000, on status of smallpox in Mexico.

Winslow, Charles-Edward Amory. The Conquest of Epidemic Disease, 1980. Rhazes full name was Muhammad ibn Zakariy R z .

Individuals identified with pockmarked faces in a 7 September 1693 list of colonists prepared by José de Angulo, reprinted in To the Royal Crown Restored, 1995, edited by John L Kessell, Rick Hendricks and Meredith Dodge.

Simón de Molina, age 40
José Velásquez Cortés, age 36
Juan de Gamboa, age 34
Tomás Palomino, age 26
     Georgia Ruiz, age 22
Cristóbal de Góngora, age 20
Bartolomé de Luna Bautista, age 18
      Gertrudis de la Candelaria y Herrera, age 12
      Magdalena de Esquibel, age 12
      Juana Cortés, age 11
      Josefa Antonia del Aguila, age 10
      María de Anzures, age 9
Juan de Sayago, age 4
      María de la Encarnación, married, no age given

Total: 14
Females: 7
Under 18: 7, 6 females