Amatus Lusitanus

The physician and prolific scholar Amatus Lusitanus (João Rodrigues de Castelo-Branco) was born in Portugal to New Christian parents, who imparted to him a knowledge of Judaism and Hebrew. After studying medicine at the University of Salamanca, Amatus first practiced as a physician in Portugal. However, the growing hostility toward New Christian physicians led him to settle in Antwerp in 1553. Achieving great fame as a physician, Amatus was given a position as lecturer at the University of Ferrara in 1540 and attended nobles, royalty, and popes. Due to the increasing persecution of Jews and New Christians in Western Europe, he fled to the Ottoman Empire, living initially in Ragusa and later settling in Salonika, where he practiced Judaism openly. His seven volumes of Centuriae, each one of which includes one hundred medical case histories, are a treasury of information on seventeenth-century medicine. Lusitanus was the first to note that veins ensure the flow of blood in the proper direction.