Mariano Lagasca

From Hispanopedia
Mariano Lagasca
Mariano Lagasca y Segura
BornOctober 4, 1776
Encinacorba
DiedJune 23, 1839
Barcelona
OccupationBotanist
Known forBotanical author abbreviation: Lag.

Mariano Lagasca y Segura, also known as Mariano La Gasca Segura (Encinacorba, Zaragoza, October 4, 1776 – Barcelona, June 23, 1839), was a distinguished Spanish botanist, physician and writer.

During his career, Lagasca made numerous collecting trips throughout Spain, contributing significantly to the study of botany. He was director of the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid, and took an active part in politics during the Liberal Triennium. After the restoration of absolutism, he went into exile in London, where he continued his botanical research and collaborated with prominent British scientists. He returned to Spain after 11 years of exile and resumed his post at the Botanical Garden.[1]

Biography

The son of Ramón Gasca and Manuela Segura, humble peasants, he was placed at a very young age in the household of the scholar Antonio Verdejo, Canon of Tarragona. With the help of Antonio Martí Franqués, he studied the Humanities, took an interest in agriculture and participated in the sessions of the Economic Society of Tarragona. During the 1795–1796 academic year he began his medical studies at the University of Zaragoza, where he attended the Botany classes taught by Pedro Gregorio Echeandía; he continued his studies at the University of Valencia (1796–1799), where he practiced Botany with Vicente Alonso Lorente, and completed them in Madrid.

On his arrival in Madrid in the summer of 1800, through the intercession of the physician Ignacio Graells, he was placed in the household of Juan Bautista Soldevilla, Physician of the Chamber, who introduced him to Antonio José de Cavanilles, with whom he formed a close personal relationship and a fruitful professional activity in the field of botany. In 1801, the year Cavanilles was appointed director of the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid, Lagasca worked alongside José Demetrio Rodríguez as a student at the Royal Garden, taking charge of the herbarium and seedbeds. In 1801 he published, together with Demetrio, Descripción de algunas plantas del Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid.

He made numerous collecting trips throughout Spain, assembling an extensive herbarium. During the summer of 1803 he traveled through the mountains of León and Asturias, with a stipend from the Government, for the purpose of completing the Spanish flora.

Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid

Upon the death of Cavanilles he was appointed vice-professor of botany at the Royal Botanical Garden in 1806 and professor of Medical botany at the Central University of Madrid in 1807. Together with Simón de Rojas Clemente y Rubio he published in 1802 a series of articles in the Anales de Ciencias Naturales under the title Introducción a la Criptogamia.

During the Napoleonic Invasion of Spain, the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid was used as stables by the French troops and suffered great deterioration. The French soldiers also camped in its gardens, cut firewood, caused fires and seized resources such as the fish from the ponds.

Lagasca fought in the resistance, serving as a physician of the National Militias, accompanying the army stationed in Salamanca (August 1808), Jaén (November 1809) and Cuevas de Almanzora (Almería) (February 1810).

In September 1810 he was posted to Alicante, where he met Vicente Melo de Portugal Fernández de Heredia, thanks to whose patronage the first volume of his Amenidades naturales de las Españas was published; it contains one of his most highly regarded studies, the one on the natural classification of the Compositae.

He then went to Murcia, where he fought the yellow fever epidemic, from which he himself relapsed on three occasions.[2] There he applied the febrifuge method devised by the physician Tadeo Lafuente, under whose orders he served and whose theories he disseminated widely. During his stay in Murcia he was appointed a full member of the Academy of Medicine of Murcia, an institution he went on to preside over.

After the expulsion of the Napoleonic army and the dismissal of the afrancesado Claudio Boutelou, Lagasca was appointed director of the Royal Botanical Garden. His Elenchus plantarum quae in Horto Regio Botanico Matritensi colebantur and Genera et species plantarum, quae aut novae sunt (...) date from 1816.

His work on behalf of the Economic Societies of Friends of the Country led to his being named, among others, a member of merit of those of Valencia (February 3, 1815) and Madrid (March 6, 1815).

On May 14, 1820, he was a founder of the Ateneo Español, where he held the post of interim vice president and took an active part in drafting its scientific Regulations (Madrid, 1820). Lagasca acquired great national and international prestige, which led to his inclusion in the Physiographic Society of Lund in 1815, the Imperial Leopoldine Academy of Naturalists of Bonn in 1818, the Horticultural Society of London in 1819, the Academy of Natural Sciences and Arts of Barcelona in 1820, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Munich in 1821, and the Linnean Society of Paris, also in 1821.

He collaborated, together with José Francisco Pedralbes, Agustín López de Baño, Narciso Tomás, Ramón Trujillo, José Pumarejo, Pablo Montesino, Ramón Salvato and Mateo Seoane, in drafting the Proyecto de código sanitario de la Monarquía española (Draft Sanitary Code of the Spanish Monarchy) presented in 1822.

Mariano Lagasca was a signatory of the manifesto calling for new Cortes and a new Government, published on July 23, 1822, and of the Exposition made to the extraordinary Cortes by 66 deputies on the causes of the ills afflicting the nation, read in the Cortes on October 9, 1822.

Elected deputy to the Cortes of the Liberal Triennium, he represented the electoral district of Aragon during 1822 and 1823, and took part in drafting the Plan of Studies of the period. His name appears on the “Lista de Masones hallados que componen varias logias de Madrid” ("List of Masons found who make up various lodges of Madrid"), preserved among the reserved papers of Ferdinand VII.[3]

In March 1823, with the arrival of the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis, he moved to Seville together with the rest of the Cortes. During the violent episodes of the Day of Saint Anthony he lost a valuable part of his belongings, including some manuscripts and his herbarium, which he had to leave behind when the entire party fled hastily toward Cádiz on a steamboat down the Guadalquivir River, while the absolutist partisans looted his belongings and threw them into the river.

During the Ominous Decade Lagasca continued his work and publications in London and Jersey, until he was able to return to Spain in 1834. During his time in exile he cooperated with the cultural initiatives promoted by the Spanish émigrés, among them the Spanish Ateneo of London, inaugurated on March 16, 1829, where he taught Botany classes. From there he managed to maintain (albeit with the obvious limitations) his international scientific contacts, and published some contributions in English scientific journals. During these years he was named an honorary member of the Botanical Society of Regensburg in 1824, a corresponding member of the Royal Horticultural Society of the Netherlands in 1828, and a member of the Linnean Societies of London in 1831 and Stockholm in 1832. In 1833 he also became an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy and of the Royal Jersey Agricultural and Horticultural Society.

Portrait of Lagasca in 1842

Upon the death of Ferdinand VII he was able to return to Spain, together with the rest of his family, after 11 years of exile, and was restored to his post as director of the Royal Botanical Garden. From that position he promoted the reorganization of the scientific establishments and the creation of a Board of Professors of the Museum of Natural Sciences, to which the Botanical Garden was attached, and of which he was appointed President by Royal Order of September 21, 1837. Around the same time he received government recognition with the award of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. Scientific societies continued to admit him to their ranks, and during those years he was named a member of the Academy of Medicine of Paris in 1835 and of the Lusitanian Pharmaceutical Society in 1839.

Because of his delicate state of health he moved to Barcelona on December 28, 1838, where he lodged in the Episcopal Palace, and where he died six months later as a result of angina pectoris. He was buried in the Eastern Cemetery of the Ciudad Condal. In October 1996 his remains were transferred to his hometown, where they rest today.

Works

Observaciones sobre la familia natural de las plantas Aparasoladas. (Umbelliferæ)
  • Amenidades naturales de las Españas.
  • Elenchus plantarum quæ in Horto Regio Botanico Matritensi colebantur anno MDCCCXV.
  • Noticia del descubrimiento del liquen islándico en el puerto de Pajares.
  • Memoria sobre las plantas barrilleras de España.
  • Flora española.
  • Ceres española.
  • Noticia de la vida literaria de D. José Antonio Cavanilles.
  • Materiales para la noticia histórica de Gabriel Alonso de Herrera.
  • Lista de plantas útiles para los prados.
  • Descripcion de algunas plantas del Jardin Botánico de Madrid, with D. José Demetrio Rodriguez.
  • Observaciones sobre la familia natural de las plantas Aparasoladas. (Umbelliferæ)

Honors

Genus
Species

Bibliography

Statue of Mariano Lagasca in the Royal Botanical Garden
  • Colmeiro, Miguel, "La botánica y los botánicos de la Península Hispano-Lusitana : estudios bibliográficos y biográficos", Madrid, imprenta y Estereotípa de M. Rivadeneyra, 1858
  • Pérez-Rubín, J. and Jiménez Merino, C. (2009). “El testamento anotado del botánico Mariano La-Gasca (Barcelona, 1839)”. Acta Botánica Malacitana, 34, pp.: 309-315. [1]
  • Pérez-Rubín, J. (2010). “Los materiales botánicos de Mariano La Gasca llegados a Málaga en 1834”. Acta Botánica Malacitana, 35, pp. 215-219. [2].
  • Pérez-Rubín, J. (2010). “Anotaciones de Mariano La Gasca en la ‘Flora Española’ de J. Quer (1762-1764)”. Acta Botánica Malacitana, 35, pp. 220-221. [3].
  • Pérez-Rubín, J., Acosta, A. and Garrido, M. (2010). “Libros, manuscritos y plantas secas de Mariano La Gasca (1776-1839) conservados actualmente en Málaga”. Acta Botánica Malacitana, 35, pp.: 222-229. [4].

Sources

  • Part of the information is taken from the information panel at the foot of the statue by Ponciano Ponzano Gascón in the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid.

The standard author abbreviation Lag. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.

Notes

  1. ↑ Lagasca, Mariano de, 1776-1839 Biblioteca Histórica Marqués de Valdecilla
  2. ↑ Exámen de la memoria sobre la fiebre amarilla, que se ha padecido en la ciudad de Murcia en 1811, escrita por D. Bartolomé Colomar, que no estaba en ella, según consta de la sin par historia, que acaba de dar á la luz este zaherido mártir del contagio hecho en 1812, de modo que pueda servir para el de 1813, y siguientes, por un curioso en la ciudad de Murcia; é ilustrado con notas instructivas y fidedignas por un médico musulmán y causalista, Murcia, Imprenta de Teruel, 1812
  3. ↑ Archivo de Palacio, Madrid, t. 67, fols. 159r.-201r
  4. ↑ Anales Ci. Nat. 6: 331. 1803 nom. et. orth. c (GCI)
  5. ↑ Fontqueria 2: 20 1982 (IK)
  6. ↑ Hieracioth. Hisp. 12: no. 169. 1901 ; Bull. Soc. Bot. France 51(Sess. Extraord.): xliv 1904 (IK)
  7. ↑ Prodr. Fl. Hispan. 3(4): 868 1880 (IK)
  8. ↑ Flora 55: 27 1872 (IK)
  9. ↑ Anales Jard. Bot. Madrid 53(2): 283, nom. nov. 1996 (IK)
  10. ↑ Bot. Zeitung (Berlin) 17: 282 1859 (IK)
  11. ↑ Prodr. [A. P. de Candolle] 1: 43 1824 (IK)
  12. ↑ Prodr. [A. P. de Candolle] 2: 586 1825 (IK)
  • International Plant Names Index (IPNI): Mariano Lagasca y Segura (author ID 5205-1)
Retrieved from "https://en.hispanopedia.com/index.php?title=Mariano_Lagasca&oldid=2414"