This seventy-four page book traces the lives of two physicians during the Venezuelan war of independence. José Domingo Díaz and Juan Francisco Sánchez belonged in opposite camps, Díaz being a convinced royalist and Sánchez a passionate patriot and republican. The very diversity of their lives teaches us a great deal about the status of medicine in Venezuela during these critical years.

Díaz was born of unknown parents and was educated in the home of a priest whose name he adopted. In 1795 he received the doctorate in medicine from the University of Caracas, and in 1808 he went to Spain where he spent the following two years. On his return he found his native land at the brink of separation from the mother country. Whatever his reasons may have been, he threw in his lot with the royalists, and his famous Recuerdos sobre la rebelión de Caracas is still, in spite of its royalist bias, one of the principal sources for any study of the revolution that shook Venezuela. Díaz died in Spain about 1831, remaining a conservative to the end.

Sánchez, on the other hand, had no formal education, and his practice of medicine, surgery in particular, was derived from whatever knowledge he acquired during his visits to hospitals in Caracas. He joined the patriots’ army in 1810, and from this time on his life reflects the ups and downs of the military struggle. Eventually he abandoned his life as a physician for that of a soldier, and became a colonel in Bolivar’s army. He was one of the principal witnesses against Piar in 1817 and contributed more than anyone else to his conviction and execution. Inevitably his conduct in the case has injured him in the eyes of some historians, but Fortique maintains that Sánchez should be admired for his unflinching loyalty to the cause of independence.

This unpretentious account of two men, united only by their profession, acquaints us with the social fabric of the colony by means of concrete details. It is a welcome addition to our knowledge of the colony as it emerged from the domination of Spain.