Francisco Valles de Covarrubias

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Francisco Valles de Covarrubias
Portrait of Francisco Valles, engraving by Manuel Alegre after a drawing by José Maea for the Retratos de los españoles ilustres, 1791.

Francisco Valles de Covarrubias, also known as the Divine Valles (Divino Valles)[1] (Covarrubias, October 4, 1524 – Burgos, September 20, 1592), was a Castilian physician, the greatest Spanish exponent of Renaissance medicine.

He was distinguished by his profound knowledge of the works of Galen, Hippocrates and Aristotle. His approach was characterized by a clinical and anatomical perspective that sought a balance between classical tradition and direct observation. Valles de Covarrubias is considered a forerunner of modern pathological anatomy, thanks to his emphasis on the study of the causes of disease through the autopsy and the correlation between symptoms and organic lesions.[2]

In addition to his distinguished academic career, he was Physician of the Chamber to King Philip II and General Protomedic of the Kingdoms and Lordships of Castile. His influence spread through his numerous works, such as the Commentaria in librum Galeni de morborum causis (1588) and his best-known work, De morbis acutis (1569), which became a reference work in the pathology of his time. His legacy endured beyond his era, influencing the development of medicine in the following centuries.[3]

Biography

Francisco Valles was born in Covarrubias (a town in the present-day Province of Burgos) and was baptized on October 4, 1524. His parents were Francisco Valles (also a physician) and Brianda de Lemus. He had three siblings: Pedro, who was archdeacon of Covarrubias; Fray Luis, an Augustinian religious; and Petronila, who was the wife of Manuel Hurtado de Vera. In 1544 he began his studies at the Trilingual College of the University of Alcalá, obtaining in 1547 the licentiate in arts and philosophy, and becoming in 1553 a master of arts and philosophy. In 1553 he obtained the licentiate in medicine, and he received his doctorate in 1554; he is recorded as a professor at least from 1556, teaching classes in practical anatomy through the dissection of cadavers.[4] In 1557 he succeeded Cristóbal de Vega in the Prima chair of medicine at Alcalá, which he held until 1572.[5][6]

He was married for 42 years to Juana de Vera, with whom he had six children: Lucía, Francisco, Juana, Catalina, Gabriel and Diego. In 1587 he founded a mayorazgo (entailed estate) with his wife, on the house he had on Calle de Santiago and his property in Alcalá de Henares.[7]

He studied in various European cities, which brought him into contact with Andreas Vesalius, whom he would succeed in 1572 as personal physician to Philip II, who appointed him "Physician of the Chamber and General Protomedic of the Kingdoms and Lordships of Castile", the highest medical office in Spain, attaining great professional prestige and recognition as an intellectual. He established the examination of the "Protomedicato", which all licentiates in medicine had to take in Madrid in order to practice, as a check on the training received at the various universities of Spain. It was this King who called him "Divine", after curing him of an attack of gout.[8]

He practiced for most of his life in Alcalá de Henares, where he taught medicine, being the first in Alcalá to give practical classes with cadavers, for which reason he is considered the creator of pathological anatomy.[9]

First book published by Valles: Controversiarum et philosophicarum libri decem (1556).

His first work, Controversiarum medicarum et philosophicarum libri decem (1556), analyzes problematic questions of physiology, pathology, clinical medicine and therapeutics. As a follower of the humanist mentality, Valles turns, in the first place, to the classical texts consulted directly in codice graeco and does not hide his contempt for the translations of the medieval barbari. In the second place, he relies on anatomical data obtained from the dissection of human cadavers. Mainly through the Valencian anatomist Pedro Jimeno, he assimilated the new Renaissance morphology and made it one of the foundations of his work: "If it was fitting that some controversies be decided by anatomical description, I examined the corresponding part with my own eyes, not just once and without witnesses, but on many occasions and in the presence of students, who were informed of what was being sought, for in this way it was more difficult to be mistaken." The posing of many "controversies" is, indeed, a consequence of recent anatomical discoveries, some of which influenced the future development of neurophysiology.

Asserting that anatomical observation refutes the arguments of Jean Fernel, according to which the motor "animal faculty" resided in the cerebral substance or "marrow" and was transmitted through the fibers of the nerves, while the sensory faculty was located in the meninges and was transmitted through the tunics of those same nerves, he then criticized the doctrine of tota barbarum schola: "the spirits are transmitted to all parts of the organism and with them the faculties are transported." Valles argued that this is opposed by the fundamental fact that the "spirits" are "corporeal", with a thickness or density that makes their instantaneous transmission impossible, such as that implied by the voluntary movement of a foot or the pulse of a distal artery at the same moment as the contraction of the heart. For this reason, he maintained that movement and sensation were transmitted through the nerves by means of "a certain spirituous modification without transport of matter, so that it can act suddenly at a distance and pass through solids, since [...] the nerves are dense and hard."

In connection with the preceding controversy, he reduced the number of directing or hegemonic faculties, "whose primary seat is the brain", admitting only "the imaginative, the cogitative and memory", as against the five proposed by the Aristotelians and Avicennists. He also refers to their location: "The common opinion of almost all physicians is that the seat of the imaginative is in the anterior part of the brain, that of the cogitative, the middle ventricle, and that of memory, the posterior." He rejects this doctrine and offers numerous arguments that "they reside in the brain, without this distinction." On the question of "whether the sensory and motor faculties are transmitted through the same nerves", he defends the multiplicity of the instruments of sensation and of movement, as well as of the corresponding nerves.

He returned to this subject in his later works with approaches more grounded in anatomy. He devotes eight chapters to the external senses, dealing with the organs of smell, hearing and sight, rejecting the opinions of Aristotle and Galen. He also studies the more general subject of the "localizations of the senses", reiterating that "the same faculty that has the power to imagine, reason and remember, rooted in the brain, is the one that sees in the eyes, hears in the ears, tastes in the tongue, etc."[10]

The extraordinary influence throughout Europe of Valles's work Controversiarum medicarum et philosophicarum libri decem, through fourteen editions from 1556 to 1625, explains why the Swedish historians of medicine B. I. Lindskog and B. L. Zetterberg, members of the Sydsvenska Medicinhisttoriska Sällskapets, devoted to it for years a model investigation using the rigorous method of so-called "material bibliography".

Besides being a physician, he was a great humanist and writer, with a masterful command of classical Greek and Latin. He spent his last years in the apothecary of the Monastery of El Escorial, preparing the distillation of natural plants and organizing the library.[11] During those years he published De sacra philosophia (1587), a Methodus medendi (1558), which ranks among the best manuals of clinical therapeutics of the Renaissance, and the Tratado de las aguas destiladas, pesos y medidas de que los Boticarios deven usar, printed in the same year as his death (1592) and intended to explain a royal ordinance on the subject. The elderly protomedic, although he knew the Paracelsian Diego de Santiago and the rest of the "distillers of His Majesty", based his gloss on the texts of materia medica and distillation predating the Paracelsian movement.

He died on September 20, 1592 at the Augustinian Convent in Burgos, while accompanying King Philip II on a journey. His remains, at his express wish, were transferred and buried in the Chapel of the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso, in Alcalá de Henares. On April 14, 2011, during restoration work on the chapel, a lead urn containing the remains of Vallés was found.[12]

Works

Tratado de las aguas destiladas, pesos, y medidas de que los Boticarios deuen usar (1592).

He began publishing at a very young age, with 20 known works, ranging from translations of the classics to works of his own, on both medical and philosophical subjects.[13]

Influences

He influenced the great theologian, philosopher and jurist Francisco Suárez, a contemporary of Valles, whom Suárez knew and studied, applying to his early work De Anima anthropological conceptions already present in the work of the great humanist physician and philosopher.[17] In this great work, Suárez cites the Divine Vallés as many as 31 times, commenting on important passages of his Controversias and of his De sacra Philosophia. But most importantly, he takes from him the theory of the sympathy of the powers, rooted in the same soul, which constitutes one of the best contributions to the study of epistemology and of soul-body relations in the Philosophical Anthropology of Suárez.[18]

Recognition

Tombstone of his burial niche in the Chapel of San Ildefonso (Alcalá de Henares).[19]

In 1912, in recognition of his contributions to Medicine, the Divino Valles Hospital was built in Burgos, named in his honor.[20]

In Madrid there is a street bearing his nickname, "Divino Vallés", in the District of Arganzuela.

Controversy over his surname (Valle or Vallés)

The physician's printed work, in Castilian or Latin, appears signed as Francisco Vallesio Covarruviano or Francisci Vallesii Covarrubiani, which would mean 'Francisco del Valle, native of Covarrubias'. Valle or Valles is a common surname in Castile and, for many specialists, this is the correct way to name him, and not Vallés, as also appears in certain publications.[21] When, at the end of the 20th century, this physician was studied again in historical works and in institutions, the form stressed on the penultimate syllable (Valles) was preferred, both at the CSIC and in specialized works (those of V. Peset Llorca, E. Sánchez Fernández-Villarán, L. García Ballester, J.L. Abellán or J. Pardo Tomás), as well as by the hospital in Burgos that bears his name.[22][23]

See also

References

  1. ↑ López Piñero, «Francisco Valles de Covarrubias» in Diccionario biográfico español, Real Academia de la Historia; Peset Llorca, V., «La curación por la palabra según Francisco Valles», in Cuadernos de Historia de la Medicina, 3, 1964; Reverte Coma, José Manuel, Francisco Valles de Covarrubias y Alcalá de Henares (su vida y su época), Ediciones del Museo "Profesor Reverte Coma" de Antropología, Médica-Forense, Paleopatología y Criminalística, 2012. On the form Valles or Vallés of the surname, see the section "Controversy over his surname".
  2. ↑ Sánchez-Casas, P., "La contribución de Francisco Valles a la medicina moderna", Revista de Historia de la Medicina y la Ciencia, vol. 20, no. 2, 2015, pp. 112-125.
  3. ↑ Fernández de la Vega, C., El humanismo médico en la obra de Francisco Valles, Editorial Universitaria, 2008.
  4. ↑ Oliver de Brichfeus I. Francisco Valles de Covarrubias, apellidado "El Divino". Memoria biográfico-bibliográfica. Madrid: Impresor Alejandro Gómez Fuentenebro; 1866. [dead link]
  5. ↑ Peset JL. Los saberes médicos en la Universidad de Alcalá. In: Jiménez Moreno L (coordinator). La Universidad Complutense Cisneriana: impulso filosófico, científico y literario, siglos XVI y XVII, Madrid, Editorial Complutense, 1996. pp. 257-60.
  6. ↑ Hernández J. Cristóbal de Vega (1510-1573) y su Liber de arte medendi (1564). Valencia, Universidad de Valencia, 1997.
  7. ↑ Escritura del mayorazgo de Francisco de Valles y Juana de Vera. Madrid: manuscript; 08/19/1587. Biblioteca Digital Hispánica. Retrieved 06/18/2013. [dead link]
  8. ↑ Retratos de los españoles ilustres con un epítome de sus vidas, Madrid, Imprenta Real de Madrid, 1791. pp. 95-7.
  9. ↑ García Lledó A., La lección de anatomía, Alcalá de Henares (Madrid): Universidad de Alcalá; 2009. p. 9.
  10. ↑ Francisco Valles de Covarrubias José María López Piñero. Real Academia de la Historia
  11. ↑ López Piñero JM, Calero F., Las Controversias (1556) de Francisco Valles y la Medicina Renacentista, Madrid, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; 1988. ISBN 84-00-06803-3
  12. ↑ Alcalá recupera los restos del "Divino Vallés", médico de Felipe II y responsable de la Anatomía Patológica moderna. Diario del Henares, April 29, 2011.
  13. ↑ Martín Ferreira AI. Las ‘controvertidas’ Controversiae del médico humanista Francisco Vallés: Controversiarum medicarum et philosophicarum libri decem 1556–1590. Res Publica Litterarum. Suplemento monográfico “Tradición Clásica y Universidad”. 2008.
  14. ↑ Colmeiro M. La botánica y los botánicos de la Península Hispano-Lusitana. 1858. pp. 5 and 155.
  15. ↑ Salinas Araya A. Tradición e innovación en la medicina española del Renacimiento. Ars Medica. 4(4). Archived 2011-07-19 at the Wayback Machine
  16. ↑ Eustasio Sánchez F.-Villaran (translator). Libro singular de Francisco Vallés sobre cosas que fueron escritas físicamente en los libros sagrados o de la sagrada filosofía. Biblioteca Clásica de la Medicina española, tomo XVII. Madrid: Cosano; 1971.
  17. ↑ Castellote S. Francisco Suárez, Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in libros Aristotelis De Anima. Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones; 1978-1991.
  18. ↑ Castellote S. Antropología Filosófica en la obra de Francisco de Valles. Archivo Iberoamericano de Historia de la Medicina. 1963; 15:77-120.
  19. ↑ «La urna aparecida en la lápida del Divino Valles vuelve a la Capilla de San Ildefonso 4 años después». Diario digital de la Universidad de Alcalá. 04/09/2015.
  20. ↑ Hospital Divino Valles. Consejería de Sanidad de la Junta de Castilla y León. Retrieved 06/07/2015.
  21. ↑ López Piñero J.M., Calero, F. Las Controversias (1556) de Francisco Valles y la Medicina Renacentista, Madrid, CSIC, 1988, pp. 5-7,] ISBN 84-00-06803-3
  22. ↑ [1]
  23. ↑ López Piñero J.M., "Francisco Valles". In: Dicc. histórico de la ciencia moderna en España. Barcelona: Península, 1983, II, 391-4.
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