Amato Lusitano

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João Rodrigues de Castelo Branco, better known as Amato Lusitano (1511–1568), was a notable Portuguese Jewish physician of the 16th century.

Lusitano was born in Castelo Branco in 1511, of Jewish parents. He studied medicine at the University of Salamanca, Spain. Unable to return to Portugal as he wished, due to the persecutions of the Inquisition, he travelled throughout Europe before settling in Ferrara, Italy, at whose University he taught anatomy as an assistant to the physician Canano. He was for a time the physician to the Pope Julius III, in Rome. With the accession of Pope Paul IV, persecutions of the Jews in Italy began. Lusitano fled first to Ragusa, then to Thessaloniki, Greece, which then had a large Jewish community and was part of the Ottoman Empire. Lusitano died in 1568.

As assistant to Canano he discovered the circulation of the blood, and through dissections of the Azigos vein, he was the first to observe and speculate about the venous valves found there.

He wrote several books, including Index Dioscoridis (1536), In Dioscorides de Medica materia Librum quinque enarrationis (1556), and Curationium Centuriae Septem (1556).

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