Nutton, V

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Medical Historyhttp://journals.cambridge.org/MDHAdditional services for Medical History:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereLuis García Ballester(1936–2000)Vivian NuttonMedical History / Volume 45 / Issue 01 / January 2001, pp 115 - 116DOI: 10.1017/S0025727300067429, Published online: 16 November 2012Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0025727300067429How to cite this article:Vivian Nutton (2001). Luis García Ballester(1936–2000). Medical History, 45, pp 115-116doi:10.1017/S0025727300067429Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/MDH, IP address: 144.82.107.82 on 08 Nov 2013ObituaryLUIS GARCIA BALLESTER(1936-2000)The death of Luis Garcia Ballester while still at the height of his powers is a great loss tothe world of medical history, not only in Spain. Born in Valencia into a Catalan family, hetrained as a doctor, taking his MD in 1966 at Valencia. But already he was turning to a careerin medical history, under the influence ofJ M Lopez Pifiero, with whom he collaborated from1961 to 1971 during the first years of the Valencia Institute. But it was an encounter withPedro Lain Entralgo that encouraged him to work on Galen and to produce for his 1968PhD thesis an annotated translation of Galen's treatise That the soulsfaculties depend on thebody's temperaments. This was the first of a long series of Galenic studies, initially of Galen'spsychology, and later of his symptomatology, which also included a short biography of Galen(1972). All were characterized by a feeling for the historical encounter between doctor andpatient; the philological tasks of the translator were subordinated to the need to understandGalen as a medical man in Greek and Roman society.With Garcia Ballester's move from a lectureship at Valencia to one at Granada in 1971,where he set up the first Department of the History of Science in Andalucia, his interestsdeveloped to encompass the Later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, first with his Historiasocial de la medicina en la Espania de los siglos XIII al XVI(1976), and then with a memorableseries of studies on the Moriscos and their medicine (1976, 1984). These volumes broke thetraditional mould of Spanish medical history by concentrating on the social as well as theintellectual forces that influenced medicine. Not only was Garcia Ballester, an admirer ofErwin Ackerknecht, determined to locate 'medicine and society in a mediterranean region'(the subtitle of his 1988 history of medieval medicine in Valencia), but he also showed hisenormous sympathy for the oppressed and the down-trodden in provincial Spain. In Franco'sSpain this was a political as well as a historical statement. His colleagues and his studentsknew well how passionately he believed in freedom, of thought and of human society ingeneral, and how willing he was to encourage them to discuss topics with implications farbeyond the lecture room.His years in Granada, where he held the chair of medical history from 1976 to 1982, alsosaw the creation of the journal Dynamis in 1980. The preface to its first number encapsulateshis intellectual credo as well as the vigour with which he set about implementing it. In 1975,he supervised the publication of the first volume of a major critical edition of the works ofthe great Catalan, Arnau de Vilanova (d. 1311), prepared in collaboration with pupils andcolleagues within and without Spain. His willingness to help in international academic projectsand organizations was untiring. He was involved in the planning of international conferenceson Galen from 1982 to 1995, and, from the mid-1980s, organized a fruitful series of jointmeetings on medieval and renaissance medicine with the Cambridge Wellcome Unit. Hiscollaboration with the American Michael McVaugh also opened up the riches ofthe Spanisharchives of Valencia and Aragon to wider scrutiny, and helped to bring Spanish medicalhistory out of its isolation.In 1982 Garcia Ballester left Granada for Santander, where his wife held a post as a marinebiologist, moving on in 1987 to Barcelona as a research professor in the CSIC InstitucionMila i Fontanals. In both places he had to build up a group almost from scratch. In Barcelonain particular, he could conduct and organize further research into late medieval Spain, withits varied communities and languages. He encouraged studies on medieval Jewish medicine115Luis Garcia Ballesteras well as on Arabic and Latin, writing himselfmajor books and articles on the developmentof medieval Galenism. At the same time, he was also the co-author of a book on thedevelopment of the modem hospital in inter-war Spain (1990). In 1996 he returned to theUniversity of Santander, producing a stream of works on a variety of topics, but mainlyconcerned with the Middle Ages. A large monograph on medical practice in medieval Castileis in press, and two collections ofhis essays will appear as part ofthe Variorum series in 2001and 2002. Cancer was first diagnosed in 1999, and although he was thought to have made agood recovery and had embarked on a very productive period ofwriting, he became ill againin September 2000 and died only a few weeks later. He is survived by his wife and threechildren; another son died tragically young in 1976.Luis Garcia Ballester's scholarship, his abilities as an organizer, and his inspirational talentsas the teacher of a whole generation ofleading Spanish medical historians were also allied toa natural friendliness. The eyebrows would twitch, the eyes would sparkle, and a broad smilewould accompany even a warning to "Be careful" (a favourite expression when he wished todissent). But woe betide those who failed to live up to his standards or whom he suspectedof idling their time away in academic politics. Scholarship, for him, was a life-enhancingactivity: the good otologist ought to knowthehistory ofotology, thehistorian's reconstructionof the past should illuminate the present. Those who joined him in his search became firmfriends, not least because his own difficulties had given him a sympathetic ear for the concernsof others. With his death, the history of medicine in Spain has lost one of its most ardentchampions; many historians ofmedicine, well beyond the Iberian peninsula, have also lost atrue friend.'Vivian Nutton,The Wellcome Trust Centrefor the History of Medicine at UCL'I am grateful for help to Cornelius O'Boyle and to three of Garcia Ballester's collaborators, JonArrizabalaga, Fernando Salm6n and Esteban Rodriguez.116

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