Calle del Doctor Drumen

Calle del Doctor Drumen measures barely 69 metres and is walked in a moment, wedged perpendicular between calle de Atocha and calle de Santa Isabel, in the heart of Embajadores. Short as it is, it is surrounded by medicine on all sides: where the Reina Sofía now stands was the old General Hospital, and a few steps away lay the Royal College of San Carlos. In the mid-19th century the city council decided to dedicate the local lanes to eminent doctors, and into that clinical constellation the name Drumen fit. Juan Drumen y Millet earned his doctorate in surgery and, right after finishing, was sent to the front line: he treated the sick while cholera and yellow fever ravaged Galicia and Catalonia. In Madrid he held a chair of Medical Pathology, directed the Faculty clinics and became physician to Queen Isabella II. His Elementary Treatise on Internal Pathology, from 1850, became a standard text in Spanish faculties. His colleagues elected him president of the Royal National Academy of Medicine at the end of 1862, but he died in February 1863 without ever taking up the seat. The street is not known by any earlier name: it was almost certainly a new street the day the doctor’s name was hung on it.