This volume reveals interesting details on both the military and medical roles of physicians and surgeons during the celebrated campaigns of Bolívar in Venezuela. The Liberator himself “was somewhat skeptical about the medicine of his era” (p. 99), an understandable attitude toward a primitive profession. Physicians everywhere blamed yellow fever, which decimated both patriot and royalist ranks, on spontaneous generation of “germs” from miasmas, and they knew of no effective treatment for the disease. If a specific remedy existed, such as quinine for malaria, it was seldom available when needed in Venezuela. As for the surgeons, they were held in such low esteem that they were denied commissions and served as volunteers in the ranks.
Fortique has evidently done considerable research in both secondary and primary sources. Numerous “microbiographies” of physicians are provided, but the lack of specific citations about their provenance reduces the value of this information. Royalist biographies are also included, though these and other sections of the book display a somewhat partisan tone. Some of the physicians who served Bolívar, such as José Luis Cabrera and Manuel Palacio Fajardo, both deputies to Congress, used their medical careers as springboards to political successes. Here is one area where the book under review and similar works could make a genuine contribution. The “doctor in politics” is a common but little studied phenomenon in Latin America. Recent outstanding examples include Kubitschek of Brazil, Illía of Argentina, and Duvalier of Haiti, but many hundreds more have served through the years at lower levels. Fortique demonstrates anew the long history of this phenomenon, and his work should be consulted if and when the suggested general study is written.
