Diego de Argumosa

Diego de Argumosa was a Spanish surgeon, born in Villapresente, Cantabria, in 1792 and dead in Torrelavega in 1865, who became chair of surgery at the College of San Carlos in Madrid and was called the restorer of Spanish surgery. He gained early experience as a doctor attending the wounded at the San Rafael Hospital in Santander during the Peninsular War. On 13 January 1847 he introduced ether anesthesia to Spain, only months after its first demonstrations abroad, and he later used chloroform. He operated on patients lying down rather than seated, devised new methods for thigh amputation and anal fistula, and took unusual care to clean his hands, instruments and operating room. In 1835 he helped examine the nun Sor Patrocinio's claimed stigmata and found them fraudulent. He retired in 1854 and published his Resumen de Cirugía in 1856.