Eleno de Céspedes

Eleno de Céspedes, also recorded as Elena de Céspedes, was an Afro-Spanish surgeon and soldier who lived from about 1545 to some time after 1588. Born in Alhama de Granada in Andalusia to an enslaved mother and a free Castilian father, Céspedes was freed as a child, served as a soldier during the suppression of the second Rebellion of the Alpujarras, bought books on surgery and medicine, and trained as a surgeon in Madrid with the help of a Valencian surgeon. In the 1580s the Spanish Inquisition tried Céspedes on charges of sodomy, witchcraft, transvestism and bigamy, after a dispute over a possibly intersex body; only the bigamy conviction stood. Because of the value of the surgical skill, the ten-year sentence was served caring for the poor in a public hospital, and Céspedes later lived as a successful and well known surgeon. Historians still debate how to classify the sex and gender of Céspedes, and most of what is known comes from the trial record.