Humanistas médicos en el Renacimiento vallisoletano (review)

José Ignacio Blanco Pérez. Humanistas médicos en el Renacimiento vallisoletano. Estudios y Monografías, no. 5. Burgos, Spain: Universidad de Burgos, 1999. 231 pp. Ptas. 4,618.00; E 27.76 (paperbound, 84-95211-05-X).

Despite its unquestionable relevance, the history of medical and scientific language has been scarcely dealt with. Instead, it has generally been trapped in a "no-man's land" between philologists' lack of concern for the topic and an ignorance of its analytical tools on the part of historians of medicine and science. In the history of Europe it is difficult to find any phenomenon that has consciously given more emphasis to language as an agent for cultural and pedagogical reform than the movement known as Renaissance humanism. Thus the interest of the monographic study reviewed here. In Humanistas médicos, the classical philologist J. I. Blanco Pérez focuses on the language--mostly Latin, but also Castilian--of medical humanists bound to the University of Valladolid who have left us printed medical works. The volume is partly built on a Ph.D. dissertation (Valladolid, 1996) inscribed within a research program that is concerned with the language of medical humanism in Renaissance Spain, led by Enrique Montero Cartelle (professor of Latin at Valladolid). Other outstanding results of this program include two monographs focusing upon the same topic in the other two major sixteenth-century Castilian universities, namely those of Alcalá (Ana I. Martín Ferreira, El humanismo médico en la Universidad de Alcalá [siglo XVI], 1995) and Salamanca (M. Jesús Pérez Ibáñez, El humanismo médico en la Universidad de Salamanca [siglo XVI], 1998).

In chapter 1 the author examines the concept of medical humanism, which he applies so loosely that the distinction between "humanist" and "humanized" physicians is almost entirely watered down. Valladolid's medical humanism is dealt with through the written works of five physicians bound in one way or another to the local medical faculty, who are considered by Blanco Pérez as the main figures of the movement: Bernardino Montaña de Monserrate (ca. 1480-1558), Alfonso de Santa Cruz (d. ca. 1576/7), Luis Mercado (1525-1611), Lázaro de Soto (ca. 1540-1626), and Ildefonso López Pinciano (1556/7-ca. 1627). In chapter 2, sketches of these physicians' biographies are provided and the canons of their medical works, including a list of editions, are set.

Blanco Pérez, who has specified from the very beginning of his volume his strict concern with linguistic analysis rather than with a historico-medical study of these works (p. 14), deals with the several literary genres to which they belong (chap. 3), examines the quoted authoritative sources on which these physicians base their arguments (chap. 4), and develops his linguistic analysis (chap. 5). While in dealing with the literary genres his attention is focused on the commentaries by de Soto and López Pinciano, on the dialogues by de Santa Cruz and Montaña de Monserrate, and on Mercado's wide and diverse written production, his linguistic analysis copes with the issue of the language (Latin or Castilian) in which they are written as well as with their major phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactical, and stylistic characteristics. Although, quite obviously, linguistic analysis can by no means be exhaustive, its results are often greatly expressive.

In sum, Blanco Pérez's volume is a valuable instrument with which to approach the history of medical humanism in Renaissance Spain. A fuller knowledge of medicine in the Spanish kingdoms during early modern times will be achieved by applying its conclusions to the results of the new research to be undertaken by medical historians on this complex but exciting topic.