Note 26 — Chapter IV

At this time, in the year 1675, Governor Don Manuel de León was in great danger of dying, on account of having placed himself under medical treatment, without being actually sick, solely for the sake of improving his health—a proof that it might have cost him his life. Don Manuel was a corpulent man, and had grown so fleshy that he was almost unable to move about without aid, at which he grieved much because he could not attend to many functions which belonged to the obligations of his office. In view of this hindrance and his desires, Juan Ventura Sarra (whom I have already mentioned in the voyages to Siam and the coast of Coromandel) bound himself to cure Don Manuel and remove from him that great encumbrance [of flesh]—confident because he was a very expert surgeon, and the governor a man of great courage and reared in and accustomed to the perils of war. The governor accordingly accepted this treatment; and the skilful surgeon opened his abdomen in many places and removed from him many lumps of fat, and then sewed up and treated the wounds. In a few weeks the governor became well, and his flesh was much reduced, to the wonder of those who saw how the surgeon cut the flesh from his body, and the courage which the governor displayed—and what caused most dread [of the result] was his being an aged man, but little less than seventy years old. The king of León, Don Sancho I, was cured about the year 920 of a similar infirmity of excessive obesity, by the physicians of the Moorish king of Córdoba, Abderramen; but their treatment was not so harsh and sanguinary. It is certain that Juan Ventura Sarra was a great surgeon, and showed that he was such not only with this governor, but also in the year 1682 with his successor, Master-of-camp Don Juan Vargas Hurtado. There was no hope for Don Juan’s life, on account of a large abscess in the hip, which was not understood to be such by the physicians; but Juan Ventura knew what it was, and opened the abscess with a large lancet which he made from a dagger, more than a tercia26 long, since the cavity was very deep. In this operation he showed his skill as much as Don Juan de Vargas displayed his great bravery and endurance, which aroused admiration.