Calle de Martín Martínez
Recalls Martín Martínez (1684-1734), a Madrid physician and anatomist, one of the figures who renewed Spanish medicine in the eighteenth century.
Martín Martínez was born in Madrid in 1684 and died here in 1734. He practised at the Hospital General de Madrid, where he also taught anatomy, and rose to be physician of the chamber to Philip V, but his mark lies in his books, not his posts.
His Complete Anatomy of Man served as a manual for several generations of surgeons. Martínez ranks among the novatores, those who placed observation and experiment above inherited authority. He struck up a friendship with Father Feijoo, with whom he shared the idea that no doctrine deserves respect merely for being old, a stance that drew disputes with the champions of scholastic medicine.
The calle de Martín Martínez runs through Ciudad Jardín, in Chamartín, one of the estates laid out in the first third of the twentieth century.