El “Tentamen medicum de morbo miliari infantum, muguet, millet, blanchet, gallico idiomate appellate" (1786), de Francisco Sanponts

Abstract

A medical text on aphtae, writed in 1786 and printed in 1788, is analized. Its author was the catalan physician Francisco Sanponts y Roca (1756-1821). This work was awarded with the first prize by the Société Royal de Médecine from Paris, in a competition to study and solve the problem of the wide diffusion of Aphtae (Muguet) among the orphanages' children. This was the first description of this disease in Spain. The author was influenced by the antisystematic mentality and by the anatomoclinical empiricism; he widely refers to Van Swieten and Nils Rosen, besides other 65 authors. Through his references he proved that he was well informed about the European medicine and pediatrics, although he was not apparently acquainted with the work of Underwood, the first known description of this disease, that was published two years earlier.