Juan Alvarez Borjes, Practica y observaciones del arte de albeyteria (Madrid, 1680)
A farrier of the royal stables, who was also the crown officer examining every farrier and animal-doctor in the monarchy, put his practice into print in 1680. Another royal farrier refereed the book before it was licensed; it argues with named predecessors over reducing a dislocation, and tells readers to flee the hot iron the most cited authority of the trade prescribed.
Why this wins its question: Spanish veterinary history in English begins in 1792 with the Madrid school, and everything before it is compressed into the word "farriers". This object opens a book from a century earlier and quotes what is actually in it: the title page in which the same man is the king's shoeing smith and the crown's examiner of every farrier and albeytar in all its kingdoms; the censure by the queen's farrier, ordered by the Council, complaining that practitioners repeat what they find written without reflecting on what they do; the rule that dislocations must be reduced, splinted and bound, and the instruction to send for a bone-setter when the master cannot do it; and the author's flat judgement that two authors prescribed a remedy neither of them had ever tried, followed by his refusal of the hot iron the most cited authority of the trade had ordered. It also declines the flattering reading: the Galenic four intentions are still the frame, and the object says so.
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 work, the man and the office in one breath: "PRACTICA, Y OBSERVACIONES PERTENECIENTES AL ARTE de Albeyteria, en que se manifiesta el modo particular con que se deben curar las mas graues causas que se pueden ofrecer en este Arte. COMPVESTAS POR IVAN ALVAREZ BORJES ... Herrador, y Albeytar Mayor que fue de las Reales Cauallerizas del Rey nuestro Señor Don Felipe Quarto (que està en gloria) y al presente lo es de las del Rey nuestro Señor Carlos Segundo ... Alcalde, y Examinador Mayor en todos sus Reynos, y Señorios, de todos los Herradores, y Albeytares". The imprint is "En Madrid: Por Iuan Garcia Infançon, Año 1680", and the book was sold from the author's own house.
Two facts about the Spanish animal-doctor of the seventeenth century are carried by that one line of type. The examination of every farrier and albeytar in all the kingdoms and lordships of the crown was a royal office, exercised across the whole monarchy rather than town by town; and the man who held it was a shoeing smith of the royal stables, not a graduate physician. The trade was licensed from above and staffed from the forge.
The book passed a professional referee before it passed the censor of religion. The volume prints the "CENSVRA DE ANDRES BEJARANO, Maestro de Herrador, y Albeytar de las Cauallerizas Reales de la Reyna nuestra Señora", written "Por mandado de V.A." — that is, on the order of the Council — and read, he says, with the attention the precept obliged and with the wish "de inuestigar alguna curiosa obseruacion en mi Arte". A book about animal medicine was refereed by the queen's own farrier.
That censor states the complaint the book is meant to answer, and it is a complaint about method rather than about doctrine: in many faculties the professors are content to keep to "el estilo que hallaron escrito, ò comunmente practicado, sin aplicar la debida reflexion, à lo mismo que executan", while this author, not content with "la ordinaria vereda", opens new and safer paths. The demand that a practitioner reflect on what he is doing is being made inside the licensing system itself.
The ecclesiastical approbation, by the Jesuit Lucas de Nevares of the Colegio Imperial de Madrid, praises the book in terms worth noticing: he applied his care to the censure and it all turned into approval, because what he found was "naturalmente discurrido, y aun filosoficamente tratado, ya con medicos fundamentos, ya con razones experimentales". The licence of the Ordinary follows, signed at Madrid on 6 June 1680.
The text argues with its predecessors by name. On dislocations of the spine the author sets out why the injury is grave — the vertebrae of the loin and the neck being so interwoven with the marrow that runs through them to the root of the tail that wounds cause universal and particular spasms, "aun estando mas lexos del celebro (como se experimenta cada dia)" — reports the authority of Calvo through Arredondo for reducing the bone, and states the rule of the whole trade: "es autoridad de toda la Algebra, y Albeyteria, que todas las dislocaciones se ayan de reducir à su lugar, y aun entablillar, y ligar".
On the same page the book records a referral rule, which is the clearest sign in these pages that the animal-doctor worked beside other licensed trades: "Solo Francisco de la Reyna, dize, que si el Maestro no supiere concertar, busque vn Algebrista que lo concierte, y buelva los huessos à su lugar, y si no huuiere Algebrista, dà razon como se ha de hazer para reducir el huesso à su encaje". The algebrista was the bone-setter of the human sick; the farrier is told to fetch one, and only to proceed alone where none is to be had.
The strongest passage read here is a verdict on untested prescriptions. Discussing what to apply to blisters, the author reviews two remedies — boiling oil, which runs and turns the whole part into a sore, and an astringent ointment — and concludes: "à mi me parece, que ni el vno, ni el otro lo experimentò, porque es imposible le sucediera bien". He then reports that "Francisco de la Reyna dize se abra con hierro caliente al fuego" and answers the most quoted name in the trade with a warning: "de todo esto se ha de huir mucho por no formar llaga", above all with fire, because the burn opens a great sore that lasts a long time.
The medicine of the book is nevertheless the medicine of its century, and nothing here should be read as an anticipation of ours. Wounds are to be carried through the four Galenic intentions, "digerir, mundificar, encarnar, y cicatrizar"; the cautery is rejected for a particular lesion rather than in principle; and the reasoning about spasms runs through the brain and the marrow in the terms of the schools. What the pages show is a practitioner testing received prescriptions against what he has seen, inside a doctrine he does not overturn.
Two limits of this object are worth stating rather than smoothing. The author was born in the kingdom of Portugal, at a place in the district of Torre de Moncorvo, and held the highest veterinary office of the Spanish crown under two kings; the title page says so and nothing read here explains how a Portuguese-born farrier came to it. And nothing in these pages reaches the Indies: the horses, mules and cattle that carried the American economy were treated by men examined under the same office, but that connection is not documented by anything opened for this object.