Health, Sickness And Medical Services In Spain's Armed.Pdf

Medical History
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Health, Sickness and Medical Services in Spain's Armed  Forces c.1665–1700
Christopher Storrs
Medical History / Volume 50 / Issue 03 / July 2006, pp 325 ­ 350DOI: 10.1017/S0025727300010012, Published online: 16 November 2012

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0025727300010012 How to cite this article: Christopher Storrs (2006). Health, Sickness and Medical Services in Spain's Armed Forces c.1665– 1700. Medical History, 50, pp 325­350 doi:10.1017/S0025727300010012 Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/MDH, IP address: 83.41.229.126 on 20 Nov 2012

Medical History, 2006, 50: 325–350

Health, Sickness and Medical Services in Spain’s Armed Forces c.1665–1700
CHRISTOPHER STORRS*

Introduction The early modern era saw important changes in the character of warfare in Europe, including the development of larger, permanent armies and navies. Historians have studied many key aspects of what some call the‘‘military revolution’’,1 whose character and timing have become a matter of debate;2 but some important features of these emerging military communities remain largely unexplored. One subject which has not attracted the attention it merits is that of the health of soldiers and sailors and of medical provision in the new armies and navies. The issue has not been entirely neglected, either generally,3 or as itrelates to specific states,4 but focused studies are rare.5 This is unfortunate, not least because of the importance attached to the issue of sickness and medical provision by contemporaries, and the value of medical provision as a sort of test case by which to measure the effectiveness of medical services and hence to contribute to the ‘‘military revolution’’ debate. For some historians the laterseventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw
# Christopher Storrs 2006 Christopher Storrs, PhD, Department of History, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, UK; e-mail: c.d.storrs@dundee.ac.uk I wish to thank the Wellcome Trust for a grant which allowed me to spend one month researching this subject in Spain in the summer of 2002; and the anonymous referees of this journal for their invaluablecomments on an earlier version. I, of course, am responsible for any remaining errors.
1 See Geoffrey Parker, The military revolution: military innovation and the rise of the west 1500–1800, Cambridge University Press, 1988, passim. 2 See Clifford J Rogers (ed.), The military revolution debate: readings on the military transformation of early modern Europe, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1995. 3 SeeAndrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The four horsemen of the Apocalypse: religion, wars, famine and death in Reformation Europe, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 92–199; Ole Peter Grell, ‘War, medicine and the military revolution’, in Peter Elmer (ed.), The healing arts: health, disease and society in Europe, 1500–1800, Manchester and Milton Keynes, Manchester University Press and the OpenUniversity, 2004, pp. 257–83; and Peter Elmer and Ole Peter Grell (eds), Health, disease and society in Europe,

1500–1800: a source book, Manchester and Milton Keynes, Manchester University Press and the Open University, 2004, pp. 256–81. 4 For France, see Colin Jones, ‘The welfare of the French foot-soldier’, History, 1980, 65: 193–213; idem, The charitable imperative: hospitals and nursing inancien regime and revolutionary France, London, Routledge, 1989; Lawrence Brockliss and Colin Jones, The medical world of early modern France, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 689–700; and Guy Rowlands, The dynastic state and the army under Louis XIV: royal service and private interest, 1661–1701, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 97–8. For England, see Charles G Cruickshank,...