Let’s start this week with a clarification, for the benefit of my transatlantic readers. When I speak of “The Times”, I am referring to the newspaper that, since 1 January, 1788, has carried that name – The Times – on its masthead. Note that the distinctive font that has been used on that masthead since 1929 is known as Times New Roman, and not as Times of London New Roman.

Should I ever want to refer to The New York Times (which is 63 years younger than The Times, despite its pseudo-Gothic font), I shall call it The New York Times.

In short, there is only one The Times.

Now we’ve got that out of the way….

On my birthday last week, the Crossword Editor of The Times gave me, albeit unwittingly, the best present I could have asked of him: I was able to solve that day’s cryptic crossword in just over 11 minutes. In my prime, from the mid-70’s to the mid 80’s of the last century, I set myself the target of solving The Times crossword every day in under half an hour, and managed that often enough (and failed often enough) for 30 minutes to be a meaningful target. I believe my best ever time was around 7 minutes. Then, of course, in 1986 we came to Israel, and over the next 32 years I only occasionally attempted the crossword. Two years ago, when I retired, I bought myself a book of Times cryptic crosswords, and was horrified to discover how rusty I had become. We recently took out an online subscription to The Times and, as a man of leisure, I now indulge myself every day again.

Those of you who know me well won’t need to me to tell you how self-satisfied that birthday crossword solution time made me. Until, that is, I remembered what (or rather who) I had already decided would be the subject of this week’s post. Because I want to tell you about the greatest man in Penamacor’s history.

Your expectations of a quiet, backwater village of 2000 inhabitants having produced a man of stature are probably no greater than mine were, but let me issue a trigger warning. If you have a tendency to suffer from feelings of inadequacy or low self-esteem, do not read on, because I want to introduce you to Antonio Nunes Ribeiro Sanches. If you are saying to yourself ‘Who?’ then you can already join me in feeling inadequate. His is a name that should be familiar to us as one of the significant clinician–scientist–philosopher–political theorist–socio-cultural commentators of 18^th Century Europe. There is a theory that, had he been born in, or developed his career in, or focused his attention on, European states less marginal geographically than Portugal and Russia, he would be far better known than he is.

Sanches was born in Penamacor in March 1699, the son of New Christians, or conversos. The Municipal Museum of Penamacor devotes one wall to his memorabilia and artefacts. (The museum is itself an interesting institution, and I must make a note to tell you more about it some other time.) The display includes his baptismal certificate, both a photocopy of the formal record in the Genealogical Library of Lisbon, and a copy in his own hand.

This was, clearly, an important document, asserting as it did that he was a member of the Catholic Church. However, this was seldom enough for New Christians to escape the clutches of the Inquisition. A century earlier, the Catholic Church had introduced the concept of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood). For anyone who was not able to prove the ‘purity’ of their ancestry, an official baptism was not proof against the many professional, vocational and academic restrictions imposed on Jews, and, ultimately, was not proof against investigation by, and even torture and death at the hands of, the Inquisition.  

Sanches’ father was a wealthy merchant, and his two uncles were, respectively, a doctor in Lisbon and a well-known jurist. When Antonio left home for the city of Guarda, to further his education in music and letters, he became interested in medicine, although his father preferred the ring of ‘My son, the lawyer’ to that of ‘My son, the doctor’. The son spent 3 years studying Arts, Law, Philosophy and Medicine at the University of Coimbra, but he found the teaching old-fashioned and the students reactionary and boorish. And so he went to Spain, to study medicine in Salamanca University for three years.

Returning to Portugal, he practiced medicine, first with his uncle, caring for patients suffering from the yellow fever epidemic that killed 6000 in Lisbon (about 3% of the city’s population) and later in practice on his own, before, at the age of 26, he decided that life under the Inquisition was too unsettling, and also that he wanted to expand his horizons; he spent time in Italy before heading to London, where he attended medicine and mathematics lectures, until the English climate drove him back to the Continent. Clearly, it is possible to feel oneself a citizen of Europe even without the EU. In France, he learnt that one of the medical giants of the age, Boerhaave, was lecturing in Leyden in the Netherlands. Having enrolled at the university, Sanches spent three years attending lectures in philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, physics and pharmacology, as well as Boerhaave’s medical lectures. Sanches kept his existing medical qualification a secret, until his studies were almost complete. At that point, the Russian Tsarina Anna Ivanovna requested of Boerhaave that he send her three of his best pupils, for whom honorary posts in her empire were waiting. Boerhaave selected Sanches as one of the three, and urged him to complete his Bachelor’s degree. When Sanches revealed that he was already a qualified doctor and could leave immediately, an astonished Boerhaave refunded all his tuition fees.

So, at the age of 32, Sanches found himself chief medical doctor of Moscow. Two years later, he was called to practice in St Petersburg, close to the Russian court. A year later, he became First Doctor of the Imperial Army, and saw active service in several campaigns. In 1740, when the Tsarina was taken ill, and her physicians could not agree on a diagnosis, they wrote to Sanches, describing her symptoms. On the basis solely of that letter, Sanches correctly diagnosed kidney stones, and warned that the Tsarina would be unlikely to survive. When he arrived at court too late to treat her, and the autopsy confirmed his diagnosis, which none of the other physicians had made, Sanches became, at the age of 40, the official medical doctor of the Russian court.

For the next seven years, Sanches balanced a brilliant clinical career at court with attempting to navigate a path through the intrigues and socio-political upheaval over the imperial succession that gripped Russia until Catherine II restored order. During this time, Sanches was appointed a State Counsellor, but at the same time he was accused of Judaism and, at one point, imprisoned. Eventually, Catherine granted his request to leave Russia, in 1747.

He headed for Paris, where, from the age of 48, Sanches devoted his last 36 years largely to writing. During this time, he experienced financial difficulties, which were mitigated by a generous annual pension from the Portuguese government, and a further pension granted by Catherine II.

His written output included what was to become the standard medical text on venereal disease, which he had observed and treated widely during his military service. In addition, his early experience in Lisbon, and his army service, sparked an interest in public health and hygiene. He wrote a treatise about the hygiene of urban latrines and air pollution, and stressed the importance of proper ventilation of hospitals and prisons.

During his years in Russia, using the services of the commercial caravans that travelled between St Petersburg and Peking, Sanches established and maintained contact with the Jesuit missionaries to the Chinese court. He was one of the first Europeans to study, and introduce in his practice, the Chinese use of medicinal plants.

In addition to his catholic (if not Catholic) interest in all aspects of medicine, Sanches was passionate about a broad range of subjects, which brought him into contact, in person and through correspondence, with leading humanists of the Enlightenment. He wrote articles for inclusion in Diderot’s Encyclopaedia; he advised on educational reform in Portugal and Russia; he studied physics, history and politics. The subjects of his nine substantial written works, and scores of papers, ranged from a theory on how the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 had improved the climate, to an in-depth study of the politics, economics and culture of Portuguese America, uncompleted at his death, and from guidelines on the administration of justice to plans for the establishment of a school of agriculture. His writings on the education of the young formed the basis of the Royal College of Noblemen in Lisbon. By the time he died, Sanches was a member of the St Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences, the Lisbon Royal Academy of Sciences, the Paris Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Medicine. (It may not have escaped your notice that, as with The Times, British academic institutions feel no need to denote their nationality. The same is, of course, true of postage stamps. In many fields, it is the reward for getting there first.)

Sanches left his library of over 2000 books to the St Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences. He also left 27 volumes of unpublished manuscripts, which were printed posthumously.

And I feel good if I can manage to finish writing my blog post by Monday evening, which I have done! Never mind: I bet Sanches never solved a crossword in just over 11 minutes.

If you are more interested in Micha’el and Tslil’s 21st Century adventures than Sanches’ 18th Century ones, don’t forget that you can follow, subscribe to, like and even disseminate their youtube channel.