Domingo Royo, Llave de albeyteria (Zaragoza, 1734): an Aragonese farrier argues against the lancet
A village animal-doctor of Aragon printed, in 1734, a case against bleeding as a routine. He complains that masters open a vein because the authors order it and not because the case indicates it, surveys the centuries and the nations that never adopted the remedy, says that it reigns in Spain alone with a sceptre nobody contests, and reports that the carcasses on the dung heaps were what made him give it up. The copy read was kept in the library of the Madrid veterinary school.
Why this wins its question: The eighteenth-century argument against bloodletting is told in English as a French and British story, and Spain enters it, if at all, as the country that bled longest. This object quotes a Spaniard making the case in 1734, in a veterinary manual printed at Zaragoza: the complaint that the vein is opened because the authors order it and not because the case indicates it; the survey of the centuries and nations that never took up the remedy; the line that in Spain alone bleeding reigns with a sceptre no question of health contests; the carcasses on the dung heaps as the warning that made him stop; and the flat verdict not to bleed in that disease. It is also honest about what the man had wrong — the physiology of venom and spirits behind his conclusion, and the second-hand report of China and Japan holding up his comparison — and about how far he went, which was to narrow an indication rather than to abolish a therapy.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The title page states the programme: "LLAVE DE ALBEYTERIA, PRIMERA, Y SEGUNDA PARTE, EN QUE SE TRATA DE TODOS LOS Principios assi antiguos, como modernos de la Facultad, declarando muchos Phenomenos, y Arcanos, que nuestros Authores no los alcançaron, deseando con ellos hazer un Albeytar consumado". The author is "EL MAESTRO DOMINGO ROYO, ALBEYTAR de la muy Noble, y Fidelissima Villa de la Almunia, Natural de Azuara en la Comunidad de Daroca de el Reyno de Aragon", and the book was printed at Zaragoza in 1734, the first part by Francisco Revilla and the second by Joseph Fort.
The claim to hold both the ancient and the modern principles of the faculty, and to declare things "que nuestros Authores no los alcançaron", is the standard by which the book asks to be judged, and it places a village animal-doctor of Aragon in the same argument that Feijoo had opened for Spanish letters six years earlier. The dedication states his motive without ceremony: reading brought him the understanding of certain medicines he used "con feliz sucesso en casos yà deplorados", long experience persuaded him they would serve "à la utilidad comun", and he overcame "los embarazos de mi encogimiento" in order to publish.
The argument of chapter XXV of the second part begins as a complaint about how the lancet is used. Masters should put all their care into quenching the poison "sin hazer mencion de las sangrias, que es de lo primero que se valen sin atencion ninguna de si està indicada, ò no lo està, solo porque los Authores lo mandan assi" — and, he adds, the authors order no such thing, since they assume the master will act with the indication before him. The target is practice by citation.
He then argues from history and from other peoples. Bleeding "es, y ha sido recibida con grande variedad ... en diferentes siglos, y Naciones. Poco, ò nada la admitiò el Romano Imperio, hasta que Galeno la introduxo contra Erasistrato". The Chinese and the Japanese, "amplissimos Reynos donde el primor, y policia en todas sus obras han sido enseñança, y embidia de quantos oy los reconocen", have never bled and do not allow bleeding, and "viven muy sanos, y fuertes gozando de larga vida, y libres de muchos accidentes"; innumerable other nations know nothing of the remedy. In Europe it has run since Galen with general acceptance, "si bien siempre ha sido un remedio con el sobrescrito de horroroso".
That comparative argument is the weakest part of the case and the object does not launder it. Royo reports the practice of China and Japan at second hand, in the idealising terms of the European literature of his day, and offers no source for it; his conclusion happens to run with the evidence, but the premise is hearsay about places he had not seen and cannot bear the weight of the inference he puts on it.
He reports where the argument stands in his own century, and on both sides. The chemists, he writes, have turned away from so lamentable a remedy, finding in their operations what can temper the blood; others blame it altogether and heap on Galen "mil oprobios ... tratandolo de barbaro, ignorante, enemigo, y monstruo de la naturaleza"; many use it with much moderation, sparing it wherever less offensive medicines will serve. Then comes the sentence about his own country: "Solo aqui en España vive, y reyna la sangria con tan seguro ceptro, que no ay litigio de la salud, donde no dè la primera decision su authoridad".
What changed his own practice, on his account, was not reading but mortality. Having followed the course of his masters and of the authors "con muchissima confiança", he found warnings of the dangers of the great remedy, and "he visto, que los cadaveres en los muladares han sido los mas infalibles avisos, de que era forçoso retirarme de tal practica, ò proseguir con grandissima prevencion, cuidado, y cautela". The carcasses on the dung heaps are offered as evidence, and the caution he draws from them is expressly not a prohibition but a demand for care.
His verdict for the disease in hand, the swelling the trade called lobado or buon, is stated flatly: "Mi dictamen es, que en esta enfermedad no se ha de entrar sangrando". The reason is drawn from the doctrine of his time and is wrong in its physiology: the matter is deleterious or venomous, the venom does not leave with the blood, and bleeding evacuates the spirits that were resisting it, so that the poison is left stronger for want of its contraries. The treatment he substitutes is the alexipharmic proper to the species of venom.
He also declines the sweeping position. He writes that on this subject of bleeding he has much more to say and leaves it, that the blood is always to be conserved in this disease "menos en el caso de plenitud ad vasa sin veneno", and that he intends and does not lose the hope of finding another course. This is a practitioner narrowing an indication, not a reformer abolishing a therapy, and the distinction is his own.
The copy read carries its own small piece of evidence about what became of this literature: the title leaf is stamped by the library of the Escuela Especial de Veterinaria de Madrid. The school that replaced the albeytar with the veterinarian from 1792 onward kept the books of the trade it superseded, and this Aragonese manual of 1734 was one of them.