Tractatus de Fascinatione

Tractatus de Fascinatione

Diego Álvarez Chanca (d. 1515), the author of the codex at hand, was a Spanish physician of the highest order. It is a Latin treatise on eyes and vision, also called Libro de Ojo or Book of the Eye, which was published in 1499 by Pedro Brun in Seville. The medical text was printed in a fine Gothic script adorned with engraved initials and frames consisting of flowers, insects, and animals. The ophthalmological treatise is famous today, but curiously, it was not mentioned by the German philologist Konrad Haebler (1857–1946), nor is it listed in the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, an ongoing project of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin cataloguing incunabula, early printed books originating before 1501. Chanca was employed as physician-in-ordinary to the Catholic Monarchs Isabella I of Castile (1451–1504) and Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452–1516) and attended to members of the royal family personally. He would become famous for a lengthy expedition he undertook on their behalf.

A Royal Physician in the New World

After the first transatlantic voyage of Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), the Catholic Monarchs sent Chanca to attend to Columbus and his crew on the second voyage of 1493–94, making him one of the first to describe America’s flora, fauna, and people with the discerning eye of a top-physician. Chanca’s letter from Hispaniola to Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca (1451–1524), an influential archbishop and counsellor to the Catholic Monarchs in his hometown of Seville, is the first document regarding the geography, botany, zoology, ethnography, and ethnology of the New World. These studies included a comparison of the Taino and Carib peoples, who were rivals living throughout the Caribbean. His services immediately came in handy: shortly after landing on the island of Hispaniola, Columbus was struck with malarial fever, but was successfully treated by Chanca, as were several similarly afflicted members of the crew. Chanca was also consulted by Columbus when he was selecting the site of his first settlement, Isabella, presumably to find a location that would minimize their exposure to disease-carrying mosquitos.