Calle de Argumosa

They call it “the boulevard of Lavapiés”, and one walk is enough to understand the nickname: calle de Argumosa is the widest street in the maze, a generous exception in a district of narrow alleys. It runs from the plaza de Lavapiés to the Ronda de Atocha, and today some twenty bars crowd its pavements. Behind the name stands Diego Manuel de Argumosa y Obregón (1792-1865), “the Restorer of Spanish Surgery”, a professor at the nearby College of Surgery of San Carlos —⁠the same building that now houses the Reina Sofía Museum. On 13 January 1847 he introduced inhalation anaesthesia into Spain with the most homemade of instruments: a cow’s bladder filled with ether and a metal cannula. The name landed in the right place, beside the medical axis that gathered hospitals and surgery colleges in the 19th century. Its unusual width, so surprising in the narrow-streeted Lavapiés, is exactly what lets it host so many people around a table.

On 6 November 1835, Argumosa was summoned by the courts to examine the alleged wounds of Sor Patrocinio, the “nun of the wounds”, María Rafaela Quiroga, whose injuries on her hands, feet, side, and forehead were presented as supernatural stigmata. Argumosa treated and disinfected the ulcers; in less than three weeks they healed completely. On 21 February 1836, before various authorities, the physicians certified the total cure. His actions cost him the rejection of broad devout circles: Argumosa himself summed it up in the phrase “some believers not only shut the doors of their houses to me, but also the doors of heaven”. In 1837, Sor Patrocinio confessed that a Capuchin friar named Father Alcaraz had applied a relic to her to produce the wounds and had instructed her on how to keep them open.