Andres Laguna
Andrés Fernández Velázquez Laguna, who signed Andrés Laguna and is known as Doctor Laguna (Segovia, c. 1510-Guadalajara, 1559) was a Spanish humanist doctor, especially dedicated to pharmacology and medical botany.
Biography
According to Diego de Colmenares and other historians, he was the son of Diego Fernández Laguna, a Jewish-convert doctor, and Catalina Velázquez. He studied arts for two years in Salamanca and moved to Paris in 1530, where he graduated in arts and studied Medicine. He was also trained in classical languages with prestigious Hellenists and Latinists to be able to read Dioscorides in the original language.
Received the influence of Erasmianism. He returned to Spain in 1536 and taught at the Universities of Alcalá and Toledo, and Emperor Carlos V appointed her his personal physician. He then traveled to England, living for a few years in the Netherlands and making Herbaria of all the places he went to check the prescriptions of Dioscorides.
Between 1540 and 1545, he lived in Metz, hired as a doctor by the city, and from 1545 to 1554 he stayed in Italy, where he was named a doctor by the University of Bologna and honored by Popes Paul III and Julius III, becoming doctor of the latter pontiff. He was staying in Venice at the home of the Spanish ambassador Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, an excellent humanist and owner of a large library. He returned to Spain at the end of 1557, after another three-year stay in the Netherlands. He was a doctor for Carlos I and Felipe II. He got the latter to create the Aranjuez Botanical Garden.
He died in Guadalajara on December 28, 1559. He is buried in the chapel of Santa Bárbara in the church of San Miguel, in Segovia.
There is a tree, the lagoon, commonly known as "pica-pica", named after him.
Labor
Count Palatino, House Doctor Carlos V, philosopher and humanist. Recorded by Vicente Mariani by drawing by José Maea. Ilustre Spanish Portraits1791.
Laguna dealt with literary, historical, philosophical, political (Europa heautentimorumene, that is, that miserably torments itself and laments its own misfortune) and medical issues, like a typical homo universalis of the Renaissance. The most famous of his works was his Spanish translation, with interesting comments and additions that double the original text, of Dioscorides' Materia medica . His first source was the edition translated into Latin by Jean de la Ruelle and printed in Alcalá de Henares in 1518 under the supervision of Antonio de Nebrija, but also the classes of Ruelle himself, whom he met during his stay in Paris between 1530 and 1536. The work came out with the title Annotationes in Dioscoridem Anazarbeum (Lyon, 1554). In it he also points out the errors committed by Ruelle and that he noticed when comparing his Latin translation with various Greek codices. He finished these annotations in Rome (1553) and a year later, on one of his visits to Venice, the woodcuts for the edition were made in the same place where the editions of P. Andrea Mattioli, the main disseminator of Dioscorides, were made. in Europe, who made a translation into Latin and another into Italian -1544-, which was reprinted seventeen times. Laguna personally verified all of Dioscorides' prescriptions and added his own observations, opinions and experiences as a botanist and pharmacologist who had experimented with herbs collected in numerous areas of Europe and the Mediterranean coasts. His translation is clear and precise, and the comments are a first-rate source, both for medical botany of the time, and for other scientific and technical activities. The text was reprinted in Antwerp in 1555, and was republished twenty-two times up to the end of the 18th century. It was far more influential than other editions by Galen or Theophrastus in the European Renaissance, as Dioscorides' prescriptions were more practical in nature.
Laguna still considered the theory of the four humors valid, but he was skeptical about alchemy, rejecting any claim that did not have empirical confirmation. Despite this, he included information, sometimes not first-hand, on American products, such as the antisyphilitic guaiac, sometimes in a very confusing way. In that sense it is not a direct source as the work of a Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo is.
The Experiment on Witchcraft
In Metz, doctor Laguna carried out an experiment around 1545 to demonstrate that the accusation of witchcraft against an elderly couple imprisoned for having caused a serious illness to the Duke of Lorraine, whose doctor Laguna was, was unfounded. He took the strong-smelling green ointment that was discovered in the place where the two supposed witches lived and applied it to a patient of his who suffered from insomnia. Then the woman fell into a deep sleep during which she dreamed crazy things, which convinced Dr. Laguna that what the sorcerers and witches were saying was the product of hallucinations. However, his "experiment" he failed to convince the judges, and the alleged witch was burned and her husband died shortly after under mysterious circumstances. Soon after, the duke died and Laguna left Metz.
Works
He made numerous translations and commentaries, such as The four most elegant and most serious orations of Cicero against Catilina, the Pedazio Dioscórides Anazarbeo, Antwerp, 1555, whose comments double the length of the original and is considered his most important scientific work; the Dialogues of Luciano de Samosata; De Mundo and De las Virtudes by Aristotle; Philosophical History of Galen.
Original works are Short Discourse on the Cure and Preservation of the Plague, where he states that "there is no instrument more apt than the doctor to introduce pestilence everywhere" and he proposes the formation of a body of doctors specialized in this disease. Andrés Laguna had treated plague patients in the Duchy of Lorraine with an infusion made from white chameleon, although he also recommended black chameleon. He also recommends the application of whey on an empty stomach, water with salt and vinegar and prohibits hot baths; he continued to practice incision as well as the use of gems and precious stones; the Method of Anatomy, On the life of Galen, Treatise on medicinal weights and measures; Alphabet of the Dogmas or sentences of Galen on Hippocrates; Europa heautentimorumene, that is to say, that miserably torments itself and laments its own misfortune speech published in 1543, a few days after it was read at the Cologne Faculty of Arts, in the printing house of Johann von Aachen (Cologne). The author forgot about this famous oratio and did not republish it again, but in it he was ahead of thinkers like Montaigne, Descartes, Montesquieu and Voltaire in forging the modern idea of European civilization opposed to barbarism: religious neutrality, secularization of order and public action, identical principles of social and personal morality, etc. It is a pacifist discourse in the manner of the Querela pacis of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Marcel Bataillon believes him to be the author of the Voyage to Turkey (1557), a work also attributed to Cristóbal de Villalón, Francisco Delicado, or Juan de Ulloa Pereira, and which is a dialogue between three characters: Juan de Voto a Dios, Mátalascallando and Pedro de Urdemalas, which recounts the customs of the Turks in the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, and serves the author to criticize contemporary customs in the Erasmian way. He published more than thirty works.
Institute
Doctor Laguna gives its name to an institute in Segovia called Andrés Laguna in honor of the doctor. It has been officially called that since 1963.
Others
Given by an Ibero-American academic of international prestige, the “Andrés Laguna Master Lecture” is also held every year at the University of Alcalá de Henares.
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