Abraham Zacutus Lusitanus

Abraham Zacutus Lusitanus (1575 to 1642), also called Abraham Zacuto IV and Manuel Alvares de Tavara, was a Sephardic Jewish converso physician from Lisbon and a descendant of his namesake Abraham Zacuto. He studied medicine at the universities of Salamanca and Coimbra, built a strong reputation in Portugal, and then fled the Spanish Inquisition to Holland, where he worked at the Collegium Medicum in Amsterdam. His best-known work is the twelve-volume De Medicorum Principum Historia, published between 1629 and 1642 by Henricus Laurentius, which he conceived as a praxis historialis. He wrote on plague, diphtheria, fevers and malignant growths, was one of the first to describe black water fever, and contributed to knowledge of syphilis. Contemporaries found him imaginative, and his case reports include ideas now discredited, such as treating snakes, scorpions, lizards and hens as gastrointestinal parasites. He knew of Harvey's work on the circulation but repeated anatomical errors learned from Galen, and as a New Christian convert he was sometimes viewed with suspicion by Old Christians.