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  • Medicine, Government and Public Health in Philip II’s Spain by Michelle L Clouse
  • Eduardo Olid Guerrero
Clouse, Michelle L. Medicine, Government and Public Health in Philip II’s Spain. Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2011. Pp. 204. ISBN 978-1-4094-3794-9.

In the preface and acknowledgments preceding this valuable book, Michelle Clouse confesses that she “never intended to write a book about Philip II” (xi), but that the research lead her constantly to the paper king. Clouse wrote Medicine, Government and Public Health in Philip II’s Spain, however, for two main reasons: to introduce new scholarship by Spanish historians to English-speaking audiences (i.e., Luis García Ballester, José Luis López Piñero, Juan Riera Palmero, and M. L. López Terrada) and to explain the gap between institutional perspectives and actual practices in Philip II’s Spain. Although Clouse’s book does bring new Spanish research to English speakers, Medicine is not the first attempt in this matter (see, for example, Health and Medicine in Hapsburg Spain: Agents, Practices, Representations, edited by Teresa Huguet-Termes, Jon Arrizabalaga, and Harold J. Cook).

Clouse does present an original approach to Philip II’s public health that looks carefully at the Spanish Crown’s officially written policy and also at the actual applications of them at the local level. Clouse explores the local and political health practices and regulations in Philip II’s Spain in the hope of articulating a more nuanced understanding of the early modern Spanish monarchy’s initiatives on public medicine. She concludes that “medical policies were the result of negotiation and cooperation among the crown, the towns, and medical practitioners” and that “Spanish monarchs . . . ruled more effectively when they collaborated with local officials” (11). The author logically deduces that centralizing the public health policy was also a political tool used by the Spanish Crown to extend its power in the peninsula and in the rest of the empire. Clouse consistently applies the same structure in every chapter of her study: the formulation of meaningful questions, a profound analysis of the political and social context, the constant use and reference to previous scholarly work in the matter, an examination of a case study, and a conclusion.

The introduction, “The Importance of the Matter to the Public Health,” clarifies the main terms used in her research. A protomédico (chief medical officer), for example, was a public [End Page 412] health officer in charge of applying royal policies in the municipalities. Clouse also establishes from the beginning of her study that Philip II (r. 1556–98), the most powerful of the Hapsburg monarchs, was greatly concerned with the relationship between the health of his citizens and his empire.

Chapter 1, “Protecting the Public Health: Tribunal del Protomedicato,” offers the history of the tribunals which were founded by Ferdinand and Isabel in 1477, and formed a prominent part of Spanish society until 1822. The reinstitution of the Tribunal by Charles V (r. 1517–56) in 1523, and the constant litigation from the municipal resistance that Philip II endured, particularly on the issue of the medical license granted by the Tribunal to practitioners, speaks to the importance of this institution. Clouse concludes that Philip II’s public health policy made a great impact on the Tribunal and on the medical profession in early modern Spain.

Chapter 2, “Medical Education at the University,” discusses the principal concern of and the main point of agreement between the royal monarchy and the towns: the lack of “expertise and questionable competency of the dizzying array of individuals offering services in the marketplace” (16). The author successfully shows how Philip II’s intervention in the medical science curriculum of the three major Castilian universities—Salamanca, Valladolid, and Alcalá de Henares—brought resistance from the faculty at these institutions. Clouse again underlines how this dynamic of resistance to royal expansion shaped the progress and interests of the crown and the gown, leading to better public health in the process.

Chapter 3, “Empirics, Surgeons, and Experiential Medicine: Patronage and Legitimization,” challenges the notion that Philip II drastically rejected empiric practitioners, that is the non-academically trained doctor, since he regulated their practice and...

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