Juan Luis Vives: A Humanistic Medical Educator

Abstract

One of the most emotive pieces of medicine's historical apocrypha places Dr. Thomas Linacre during the summer of 1499 on top of Little St. Bernard Pass. He is on his way home to England, but while looking wistfully back towards Italy he reverently builds a votive altar to his academic Sancta Mater. On turning his steps north he passes into history as England's premier physician and "restorer of learning," a reputation which he was about to earn and which is still maintained almost five centuries later.' Linacre was near the end of a full and busy life when Catherine of Aragon, in 1523, appointed him to be Princess Mary's tutor. He had been instrumental in the foundation of the Royal College of Physicians and was its first president. His monumental translations of Galen were coming off the press and receiving European a~c l a i m .~ Catherine was aware that her appointee, even though England's greatest living scholar, was hardly the most appropriate choice but she probably saw it as a comfortable sinecure for one of her first English friends. It was asking too much of one who had tutored her first husband, more than 20 years earlier, to bridge the generation gap and take on the routine Latin instruction of her seven-year old daughter. In looking around for a younger man to shoulder the day-today harassments of being a l royal tutor Catherine chose the young highly articulate Spanish humanist, Juan Luis V i~e s .~ Perhaps her choice was made from a lingering nostalgia for the Spanish intellectuality of her childhood, though officially it was done on the recommendation of Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More. Juan Luis was pleased to accept the English court appointment. It allowed him to be associated academically with Dr. Linacre. It pro

Reformers in Medical Education and Practice

“…Vives' reformist vision was prophetic (15). There is some suggestion that a draft for a 'poor relief bill' introduced in the British Parliament in 1535 had some provisions similar to the ideas described in Vives' treatises, and the earliest documented suggestion that the poor be cared for as a civic, not religious, obligation has been attributed to Vives (14). In 1545, the Lord Mayor of London established a plan for the care of the poor that was similar to the propositions elaborated by Vives.…”

“…A profound dissatisfaction with the quality of medical care compelled Vives to take an interest in medical education and launch a single-handed reform of medical education and practice (14). He believed that the quality of medical practice could be improved through a more judicious and stringent screening of applicants to medical schools, and he valued classical education as a necessary prerequisite to the study of medicine (14).…”

“…Vives recommended a reform of the curriculum, and proposed the use of new textbooks and a revision of the study of human anatomy and physiology, incorporating the most recent discoveries in pathology and therapeutics. Vives suggested that clinical training be effected through apprenticeships to experienced physicians or through contact with patients 'at the bedside' in hospitals (14).…”