Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/532

 CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SURGERY IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL DURING THE RENAISSANCE

According to the authority of Morejon, who published (1842-1852) an elaborate history of medicine in Spain and Portugal, these countries almost rivaled Italy, during the sixteenth century, in the number and excellence of their physicians. But, so far as I am able to judge from the record, very few of these men appear to have taken a strong interest in surgery, and of these few there are only three—Daza Chacon, Francisco Arceo and Amatus Lusitanus—who left behind them treatises which seem to call for a brief notice.

Dionisio Daza Chacon, who was born in 1503 at Valladolid, about one hundred miles north of Madrid, received his early training partly in his native city and partly at the University of Salamanca. After being engaged for some time in private practice he joined the imperial army (Charles the Fifth) in the capacity of a field surgeon in charge of a corps of three thousand men. In addition to these troops there were six thousand English archers, in the pay of the Emperor. At the two sieges in which these men participated—the siege of Landrecy in 1543 and that of Saint Dizier in 1544—Daza Chacon acquired an extensive experience in the treatment of both arrow and gunshot wounds, for the number of those injured on those occasions was very great. In 1545, after he had been chosen personal physician of Charles the Fifth, he returned home by way of Madrid, and distinguished himself greatly in 1547 by his self-sacrificing attendance upon the victims of the Plague in his native city. In 1557 he offered himself as a candidate for the position of Surgeon-in-Chief of the hospital at Valla