Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 345

FRANCISCO BRAVO (ca. 1525-ca. 1595) The opera medicinalia. Dawsons 1970 [1st ed. reprinted]. With a biographical and bibliographical introduction by Francisco Guerra. Vol. I: [6] 77 pp., 9 plates; Vol. II: 610 pp., illus., facsims. 16.4 cm.

Bravo was born at Osuna, in southern Spain, and received his medical education at the University in the early 1550s. He began to practice medicine in Seville shortly thereafter and came to New Spain sometime in the 1560s where he established a practice in Mexico City. The Opera medicinalia was published in Mexico City in 1570, and, as far as is known, is the first medical book to have been published in the New World. The book shows that he possessed great learning and sound judgment and contains many clinical descriptions and medical doctrines on venesection, materia medica, and diet as well as the first description of typhus to appear in the western hemisphere. Only three copies of the original volume are known to exist. This facsimile was made from the 1570 edition of the Opera.

Gift of John Martin, M.D.