Rodrigo de Castro

Rodrigo de Castro was born in Lisbon and studied medicine at Coimbra, Évora, and Salamanca in the mid-1560s. After completing his studies, de Castro lived first in Évora and later in Lisbon. He declined an invitation from Philip II to join a voyage to the East Indies to study herbs. In the 1580s, de Castro settled in Antwerp, possibly to avoid the Inquisition. When Antwerp was recaptured by the Spanish, he moved to the northern Netherlands. In 1594 he settled in Hamburg, where he treated residents during the 1596 plague epidemic and subsequently attended the count of Hesse, the bishop of Bremen, and the Danish king. Despite initially living as Catholic in Hamburg, his name appears on the first list of members of the Jewish community (1612). De Castro is regarded as one of the fathers of medical jurisprudence. Indeed, his most famous work, Medicus politicus, provides a portrait of the perfect physician and medical practice. In another work he laid the foundations for modern gynecology.