by Josh Forman, Head of Science, Education & Outreach
Amatus Lusitanus, also known as Dr Joao Rodrigues de Castelo Branco was a world leading physician of his time. Born in the town of Castelo Brancho, Portugal in 1511, Amatus was a Marrano – a ‘Christianized Jew’ – and thus raised as a practising Jew in secret as he was born during the Inquisition. In public, as a ‘New Christian’ he received the name Joao Rodrigues de Castelo Branco and attended the University of Salamanca – one of Europe’s great ancient universities.
Amatus studied medicine, but as was normal for the age, learned broadly, covering topics such as Greek, logic, mathematics and philosophy. Interestingly, he also chose to study surgery – whilst this is considered a vital and highly competitive part of the medical world now, it was thought of as inferior to medicine in the 1500s.
Upon graduating, he fled Portugal due to increasing pressures on the Marrano Jews. Despite outwardly being a Christian, there was heavy scrutiny and mistrust from the authorities. Amatus made his way to Antwerp, where he stayed for 7 years building a reputation as one of Europe’s foremost physicians. He treated the local elite, such as the Mayor of Antwerp and the Portuguese consul. He was recruited by Duke Ercole II d’Este of Ferrara to study and teach at the University of Ferrara in Italy. This marked the most settled and prolific part of his academic life in which Amatus completed the first 4 volumes of his written works, the Centurӕ, which describe accounts of the cases he encountered, the treatments applied, experiments conducted along with his thoughts and discoveries.
Whilst in Ferrara, Amatus extended the boundaries of learning and science. The dissection of cadavers was a very novel investigative technique at the time, and he once famously dissected 12 cadavers in a lecture. Through this process, which was highly scientific and rigorous for the time, Amatus was able to demonstrate two fundamental aspects of anatomy that we take for granted now. The nature of the blood’s circulation around the body was never truly known – specifically because we had no idea of the existence of capillaries as microscopes hadn’t been invented yet. Capillaries are the minuscule blood vessels that link the arteries and veins and take the blood to each cell of the body, to exchange oxygen and nutrients with the cells waste products. The main school of thought at the time believed the heart pumped blood into both the arteries and veins, and then it returned by the same route. Lusitano went against the conventional thought and proved the blood flows in a circuit around the body. His other major contribution was the basis of the circulation of blood discovery.
Amatus demonstrated that the veins contain valves, which he did by blowing down a vein, and the air not passing through it, which act to ensure the blood only flows in one direction – a vital aspect of his first discovery of circulation. This one was wrongly attributed to Giambattista Cananus, who attended these lectures.
Whilst in Ferrara, Amatus became the physician to Pope Julius III. The Pope held Amatus in such high regard that he was protected by and continued as physician to the Pope and his family even after he publicly declared his Judaism and began to practise openly. During this time, he also treated the Portuguese and English ambassadors to Rome and Venice.
However, upon Pope Julius III’s death in 1555 and the ascension of Pope Paul IV, a significantly less tolerant Pope, the persecution of Amatus’ earlier life in Portugal returned. Along with other Marranos, Amatus faced the choice between execution or forced conversion to Christianity. Amatus fled to Pesaro and eventually Salonika (now known as Thessaloniki, in Greece), in the Ottoman empire as he had a tip off that an arrest warrant for him had been issued.
The Ottoman empire was at the time a far more tolerant society for Jewish people, and it was here that Amatus Lusitanos lived the rest of his life. He continued writing, completing two volumes of the Centuria, which contained far more Jewish ethics and learnings and practising medicine. He passed away in 1568, aged either 56 or 57 as one of the giants of anatomical discovery.
