Uses of medical images and metaphors experienced a notable increase throughout Spanish society during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The theatre is emblematic of these uses. It is not difficult to find plays that draw directly on published medical manuals: Agustín de Rojas’ Loa sobre la dentadura y sus remedies (1604) for example, draws directly on Martínez de Castrillo’s Coloqvio breve y copedioso sobre la materia de la dentadura (1557). In more general terms, physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, and unofficial medical practitioners regularly appear on stage during the seventeenth century, providing historians with a fascinating view of the social currency of medical images during a time when drama was almost a national obsession. Among historians of early modern Spanish science, there is a long tradition of using literary texts as source material. However, we are not interested in early modern drama as a source of information about medicine per se. Instead, we will examine the representation of medicine and medical practitioners in the dramatic works of early modern Spain for two reasons. First, we hope to suggest the ways in which these plays represent a wide variety of medical practitioners and dramatise the contact between academic and popular medical practices. To do so, we will examine the characterisation of a number of medical practitioners –including physicians, barber-surgeons, vendors of simples, and charismatic healers– as well as the diseases they treated. Second, we will look at some of the ways in which even the most conventional representations of physicians –as ignorant misanthropes– underscore the intense public interest in the medical practices and theories of the seventeenth century. Both of these objectives are designed to address one of the thorniest problems facing the history of Spanish medicine: bridging the gap between the elite world of academic medicine and its popular reception. While studies of medical investigation and advances during the period have tended to characterise Spain as uninterested in medicine, greater and greater numbers of people were paying –in times of economic crisis– to see plays about medicine. In other words, the interest in medicine on the behalf of Spanish playgoers can only be described as lively and vigorous. Spanish drama, in short, indicates an unabated social concern for medicine and, in particular, an interest in the interaction and competition among academic and extra-academic medical systems. The comedias and entremeses of the seventeenth century regularly represent the transmission or dissemination of medical knowledge from one group to another. Frequently, this is done in the context of a satire of physicians, but it would be a mistake to understand the satire of medical practitioners as a wholesale rejection of medical practice; instead, plays constitute another coherent, critical voice that participates in a broad discourse about healing alternatives in early modern Spain.

The role of experts in courtrooms has been largely studied, particularly the history of legal medicine, mainly issues related to toxicology and forensic psychiatry. Scholarship on this area is still growing: some recent examples are the books by the historians of science T. Golan (2004) and I. Burney (2006) or the studies published by the French historian of law F. Chavanau (2000) Undoubtedly, Mateu Orfila i Rotger (1787-1853) was one of the key historical actors in shaping the role of medical experts in nineteenth-century courtrooms. Moreover, he was an important textbook writer, successful teacher, author of very popular books on toxicology. Many of his books are available at the BIUM website. The main objective is to prepare a biography of Mateu Orfila dealing with the three main topics of this project: science teaching, popularisation of science and scientific expertise in courtrooms. Besides continuing the mentioned research lines, we aim to prepare a critical edition of Orfila’s letters, which are dispersed in various public and private archives (mainly in Spain, France and England). We want to advance in two particular studies related to scientific disciplines, controversies and law: Orfila’s research on the absorption of poisons and the associated controversy with François Magendie, and his pioneer research on blood stains (and the first polemic with François V. Raspail). In both cases, there are promising issues to analyse the tensions between the different experimental cultures associated with toxicology, expert testimony and law during the 19th century. Moreover, the project will analyse Orfila’s ideas on the reliability of legal proofs and the place of toxicological expertise in courtrooms, as expressed in his Traité de Toxicologie. All these studies, combining editions of sources, bibliographies with monographic papers, will conclude in a biography of Mateu Orfila. Finally, our study aims to offer clues for the analysis of middle nineteenth-century Spanish toxicology, with special attention to Pere Mata, who was a pupil of Orfila and a very influential actor in the Spanish context. By doing so, we seek to offer some initial hypotheses on the different configuration of 19th century French and Spanish toxicology, a comparative approach provided by the studies on science in the European periphery (like those encouraged by the group STEP. By studying toxicologists, science teachers and science popularizers, we aim to offer a comparative view of the different ecosystems in which scientific experts play a major role in contemporary societies.

This project aims to examine the rhetorical devices or strategies used to construct a vision of human health, that is, the beliefs, attitudes, and values of a cultural and ideological nature, in Spanish journalistic discourse. We shall examine the lexical, grammatical and pragmatic resources in written texts employed with the rhetorical aim of persuading the reader, creating a discursive representation of health and expressing the argumentative viewpoints in the debate surrounding modern human health. Our goal is to determine if the Spanish press in general takes a commercial approach which encourages the consumption of wellness products and services (as do the industries of marketing and publicity) or if indeed the press adopts a critical attitude which makes consumers aware of the dangers of the culto a la salud, characteristic of our modern society. To this end, we shall analyze the rhetorical strategies identified in these two discursive representations. The analysis will include texts published in conventional Spanish newspapers as well as those in electronic format from 1995 until the present, given that during the last decade there have been noteworthy social and cultural changes in terms of human health and wellbeing. In regards to possible applications of this study, it is in our interest to contribute to the rhetorical analysis of journalistic (newspaper) and advertising discourse, especially for primary and secondary educators as well as consumers in general, so as to provide a tool for the critical reading and interpretation of health-related texts and discourse.

The aim of this research project is to focus on the image of medicine and health presented in Spanish daily newspapers (El Imparcial and Las Provincias) during the first third of the twentieth century. The term image is used here to refer to the various aspects of these subjects contained in news stories, announcements, opinion pieces and advertisements bearing on medical knowledge and practice, the introduction of new diagnostic and therapeutic apparatus and procedures (technology), aspects of the health professions and new specialties, health care and teaching, public hygiene and social medicine, as well as popular knowledge and practice related to health and to illness and its cure and prevention. We shall analyse both scientific perspectives expressed by professionals and other points of view originating from “patients” or people outside the health professions. We are also interested in discovering who produced this information and which issues and controversies most attracted the attention of the general public. In addition, we want to find out how far journalism served as a platform for popularising scientific ideas and changes. The studies carried out up till now in Spain using the daily press have concentrated on very specific topics — repercussions of pandemics or epidemics, cases of folk healers, studies of advertisements — or else they have focused on studying the popularisation of science. Through this project we intend to establish a classification of the information published in newspapers that will be useful for later studies. The period chosen is one marked by important changes in the political and economic sphere, as well as that of science and medicine, in which the daily press had already adopted a modern model of journalism. It includes the so-called Generations of 1898, 1914 and 1927. This project is partially interlinked with others carried out by the same research group devoted to the study of popular medical knowledge and practices in the present and the past, and also the study of specialised scientific journalism.