Zacutus Lusitanus

Zacutus Lusitanus

Zacutus Lusitanus , also Abraham Zacuth (* 1575 in Lisbon as Manuel Alvares de Távora , † January 22, 1642 in Amsterdam ), was a Portuguese-Dutch doctor and medical historian .

Life

Abraham Zacuto Lusitano was born in 1575 into a Marran family as Manuel Alvares in Lisbon. His great-grandfather was the royal astronomer Abraham Zacuto (1450–1510). After studying in Coimbra and Salamanca , he completed his medical degree in Sigüenza in 1596 and returned to Portugal , where he gained access to the Portuguese court as a practicing doctor.

At the age of fifty he emigrated to Amsterdam in 1625 with his wife and five children, where he returned to Judaism and took the name Abraham.

Under the name Zacutus Lusitanus he began to publish a number of medical writings. A first work appeared in Amsterdam in 1629 under the title De Medicorum principum historia . By 1642, five more volumes in the medical history series were published. In 1634 he published a collection of rare and extraordinary medical cases ( Praxis medica admiranda ). His complete works appeared posthumously in 1649 in two folio volumes in Lyon .

Zacutus Lusitanus died on January 22, 1642 in Amsterdam and was buried in the Portuguese cemetery Beth Haim in Ouderkerk .

Works (selection)

• Practice medica admiranda: in qua exempla monstrosa, rara, nova, mirabilia . Amsterdam 1634. second edition 1637
• Zacuti Lusitani, Medici et Philosophu Præstantissimi, Operum tomus primus, in quo ″ De Medicorum principum historia ″ . Lyon 1649. online
• Zacuti Lusitani, Medici et Philosophu Præstantissimi, Operum tomus secundus, in quo ″ Praxis historiarum ″ . Lyon 1649. online

Literature (selection)

• Michal Altbauer-Rudnik: Prescribing Love: Italian Jewish Physicians Writing on Lovesickness in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries . online (PDF; 465 kB)
• Harry Friedenwald: The Jews and Medicine: Essays . Baltimore 1944.
• Maximilian Lemos: Zacuto Lusitano: a sua vida ea sua obra . Postage 1909.
• Joshua O. Leibowitz:  Zacutus Lusitanus (Abraham Zacuth). In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 21, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865949-7 , p. 437 (English).