ABSTRACT
The study of anatomy was introduced at the University of Valladolid in 1548/49 and the process of incorporation differed markedly from that previously described at the University of Salamanca. No relevant publications emerged from Salamanca in more than two centuries of anatomical studies, whereas Valladolid produced two textbooks on anatomy after less than two years of practice. Documentary sources indicate that Aragonese universities and hospitals carried out dissections as early as the fourteenth century, but the University of Valladolid was the first Castilian institution where anatomy was taught from human dissection. In Spanish historiography, its status as the birthplace of both Castilian anatomy and the first publication on anatomy in vernacular Spanish, Bernardino Montaña’s Libro de la anothomia del hombre (Valladolid, 1551), has often led to the misconception that Valladolid spearheaded the anatomical revolution of sixteenth-century Spain. However, a closer look reveals that Valladolid was the only large Castilian university where no permanent chair of anatomy was ever established during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In fact, its anatomical practice was limited to a 20-month course taught by the physician Alonzo Rodríguez de Guevara. 1
