Genetics and Generation in the Fundamenta Medicorum of Álvaro De Castro: Evaluation of the Terminology and Sources

Abstract

 In this article we analyze the terminology related to Generation and, so to say, to Genetics compiled in the Fundamenta medicorum  by the physician Álvaro de Castro, and the sources from which the terms and the concepts were extracted. This work is a voluminous book having the structure of a dictionary or concordance in which the basic concepts of Medicine are collected. The work, which remains unpublished in a manuscript preserved in the Toledo Chapter Library, was written in Latin in the early sixteenth century by Álvaro de Castro, a converted Jew from Toledo. In his Fundamenta the author used Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance medical sources.