S. Giménez Roldán
Neurosciences and History 2025;13(3):140-150
Article type: Original
AUTHOR
S. Giménez Roldán
Former head of the Department of Neurology. Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Madrid, Spain.
ABSTRACT
Federico Rubio y Galí (1827-1902), a prestigious surgeon and progressive politician, started his professional career at Hospital de La Princesa in Madrid. In 1896, his vocation for teaching led him to create, by means of public subscription, a modern, private, charitable hospital complex in the city suburbs. The Instituto de Terapéutica Operatoria (Institute of Surgical Treatment) brought together elite professors, promoted a secular nursing school, and launched the Revista Iberoamericana de Ciencias Médicas (1899-1936), which was an accurate reflection of the scientific development in Spain. In its yearbooks or Reseñas (Reviews), the institute reported its changes, advances, and projects. Dr Serafín Buisen, who died in 1904, was one of its first students and became an internationally renowned electrotherapist. Thus, Romain Vigouroux, the first official electrotherapist at La Salpêtrière, recommended that Buisen continue in Madrid the course of electrotherapy indicated by Charcot for the polymath Joaquín Costa. Following the example of Duchenne de Boulogne, Buisen moved from electrotherapy to neurology. Working at the institute’s clinic for nervous diseases, in 1885 he studied the case of a patient with paralysis agitans, the term used by James Parkinson in 1817. This was the first mention of this disease in Spain. As an “up-to-date neurologist,” in 1899 Buisen diagnosed a patient with spondylose rhizomélique, today known as ankylosing spondylitis, only one year after the description by Pierre Marie.
KEYWORDS
Federico Rubio y Galí, Serafín Buisen, Instituto de Terapéutica Operatoria, history of neurology, electrotherapy
Neurosciences and History 2025;13(3):140-150