Rodrigo de Castro

A Portuguese man of Sephardic origin, he achieved notoriety as a physician in Lisbon, a city he decided to leave in the last years of the 16th century, probably due to the climate of growing religious intolerance. Arriving in Hamburg, a city struck by the plague in 1596, he soon published, in Latin, a short treatise to explain the nature and causes of the plague, suggest prophylactic and sanitary organizational measures, and summarize the therapeutic procedures and drug recipes he considered most effective in combating the disease. Besides being a testament to the best scientific information available at the time, the medical practice of the moment, and the updating of classical Greek, Latin, and Arabic medical works, the treatise constitutes a decision-making tool intended to safeguard the political agents and governing bodies of the city of Hamburg from the strain caused by a situation of severe public scrutiny, while simultaneously serving as a lever for the prestige and valorization of the medical profession.