Pedro Hispano is a name of some importance in 13th century European medicine.
He was born in Lisbon between 1210 and 1220,1 the scarcity of records prevents a more precise dating of his birth, son of the physician Julião Rebolo, physician and Chancellor of the Kingdom, and Teresa Gil2. Pedro Julião Rebolo, better known as Pedro Hispano Portucalense, attended primary school at the Olissiponense Cathedral School and went on to study medicine in France.
The testimony of Bull Flumen aquae vivaea fairly reliable record, indicates that Pedro Hispano lived in Paris during his youth and dedicated himself to the study of various sciences.
Some authors say that Pedro Julião's medical and theological training was acquired at the University of Montpellier, since there was no medical education in Paris before 1250.3
Ancient medical knowledge was always related to philosophical-religious currents. In Montpellier and Paris he had the opportunity to attend lectures on dialectics, logic, physics and Aristotle's metaphysics.2
In 1245 he obtained a Master's degree in Philosophy and Medicine.4 He then went to southern Italy in search of the most advanced medical knowledge of the time, which was taught in Sicily and at the University of Salerno.2
There is more information about the adult phase of his life. Some documents from the 13th century show the existence of a "Master Peter, doctor, called Hispano", a professor at the University of Siena in Italy. Pedro Hispano was later archdeacon of Vermoim, dean of the Cathedral of Lisbon and in 1272 appointed archbishop-elect of Braga. The following year he was elevated to cardinal-bishop of Tusculum and soon after served as a doctor in the papal curia of Gregory X (1271-1276). He succeeded Adrian V on the pontifical throne and had his name linked to the issue of the condemnations by Etiènne Tempier, bishop of Paris, of doctrines taught at the Parisian university, in which he intervened prudently.1
Pedro Hispano was then elected pope (John XXI) on September 20, 1276, and held the magisterium until his death in Viterbo on May 20, 1277, when one of the wings of the Viterbo palace collapsed.
According to Pedro Julião, medicine was based on two pillars: "ratio et experimentum". These were the basic attributes of the knowledge disseminated by his works, which had a great impact due to the therapies they advocated, presented in a clear and simple manner.4 It encompassed natural philosophy, theology and medicine, in a wide-ranging combination of knowledge not found in any other intellectual of the 13th century and which seems to have been the reason for Dante's homage in Tale 12 of the Divine Comedy Paradiso, in which Pedro Hispano can be found alongside Saint Dominic and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Of the philosophical texts, the best known is the Tractatus, or Summular Logicalesa manual of logic used in the 13th and 14th centuries in various European universities.
More than 50 texts are linked to his name, some of them of controversial authorship.5
Among his medical works, he is credited with two medical treatises on Liber de morbis ocularum e Thesaurus pauperum.
O Theasaurus pauperum6,7 uses semiological observation of diseases, cause-effect relationships and systematic comparisons, precursors of the current scientific method.
Various medical comments: Liber de conservanda sanitate, De diaetis universalibus, De dietis particularibus, De urinis, Treatatus de febribus.
O Liber de Conservanda Sanitate and De Regimine Sanitatis per omnes menses are health regiments, which were intended to guide the prevention of disease, while the commentaries were compilations of recipes against illness.
In the Liber de Conservanda Sanitate aimed at preventive medicine, Pedro Hispano highlights this intention: "Since I, Pedro Hispano, consider that the various morbid ailments originate in the body through negligence, I have found and proved with true reason some useful and tried observations for preserving the health of human life, which are not found in the bosom of Medicine. Since it is better to preserve health than to fight disease, one should treat said health."LCS p. 446
O Liber de óculo was a treatise on ophthalmology that was widely disseminated at the time in the most famous European universities. Michelangelo, having fallen seriously ill with his eyes after painting the Sistine Chapel, found relief for his ailment in the prescription of an eye drop by Peter Julian, called aquae mirabilis3.
Texts such as Thesaurus pauperum and the Liber Conservanda Sanitatewere intended to make practical knowledge available to poor students or medical practitioners without university training, and were texts whose function was more or less analogous to the scientific manuals of our time.
O Thesaurus is one of the most influential and representative medieval medical manuals, containing a kind of condensed compilation of "easy and effective remedies for almost all ailments".
REFERENCES
Walter Rodrigues
