History of Latin American Dermatology

E. SILVA-LIZAMA, P. H. URQUIZU, P. GREENBERG, S. DE LEÓNdesired to cure his soul and requested permission from Commander Rivera y Santa Cruzto retire to the Convent of St. Francis, where he wished to end his days. There, in a cell,he purified his soul, while the malignant ulcers “amused themselves creating new sources.”So died Judge Don Tomás de Arana 28 29 30 .UGLY DR. DESPLANQUEZDon Francisco Desplanquez was 32 years old, had graduated from the Medical Schoolof Montpellier, and was of ugly physical appearance judging by the descriptions of himmade at the Royal Medical Inspection Office of Mexico. He was a native of Normandy,very short, blond, with blue eyes, with the face “caressed by smallpox,” and adorned withthree moles forming a triangle on the left side, and three in a straight line on the right.With such beautiful facial attributes he fled his fatherland while still young, travelingthrough the Antilles, Mexico, Guatemala and Sonsonate. The latter city was the end ofhis overland trip.Desplanquez stayed one night in Guatemala, then continued his voyage to Sonsonete,where he arrived one morning in the month of June of 1768. As it was Sunday, the joyof the townspeople reigned over the central square. Desplanquez was a very fine draftsman;he made a sketch of the square and of the church. Don Ildefonso Ignacio deDomezin, mayor of Sonsonate, saw him drawing; the curious townspeople, intrigued bythe unknown foreigner’s horrible physique, came to suspicious conclusions, and veryquickly a wave of indignation arose against the innocent traveling physician. In lessthan an hour, Desplanquez was deprived of his papers, terribly maltreated and imprisonedin the stocks, with fetters and chains. Immediately, his papers and letters, writtenin a foreign language, were inspected, and nobody doubted that this smallpox-ravagedforeigner was a British spy paid to draw maps of the coasts. The drawing of the publicsquare was a sketch for erecting a fortification. The case was extremely serious; thedeath penalty might be necessary, and in any case the mayor of Sonsonate was not in aposition to try him, making it necessary to send the suspect to Guatemala, where hecould be sentenced.All protestations by Desplanquez – who swore he was French and that his paperswere travel journals – proved useless. In Sonsonete nobody spoke any foreign language.Therefore, a return trip to Guatemala was inescapable and the passage aboard thefrigate that was to take him to Peru had to be canceled. Goodbye dreams of wealth andhopes of the pilgrim, thought Don Francisco Desplanquez, as he humbly undertook thetrip back, under appropriate custody.On September 5, 1768, Don Pedro Salazar Natera y Mendoza, Commander ofGuatemala, gave the order for the arrest of the suspect Desplanquez, and of his companionthe surgeon Thomas. Mayor Felipe Rubio Morales carried out the order and jailedthe accused, who were accompanied by eight dragoons and placed in the safest part ofthe prison, which was the one known as “of the chapel.” Mayor Rubio Morales, the postaladministrator, Joseph de Garayales – all officials judged Desplanquez’s innocent papersas classified and suspicious. The phantom of the British pirates and the intrusion of spiesrendered the responsibility of the French physician gigantic. Translations and interrogationswere urgent. The authorities, simple men with little to do, saw in that trip a majorinvasion undertaking, expecting the mysterious papers to reveal all the keys to the marvelousplans. Since nobody was found in the entire city who knew the French language,Desplanquez himself had to translate them, under severe oath.The mysterious papers (currently preserved in the government archive) contained diversematters. One of them gave careful details of the geography and history of Peru,taken from a travel account; these descriptions were very useful to Dr. Desplanquez, whowas off to that country in search of fortune. Another contained a description of the diamondand other precious stones, a study followed by a curious technique for whitening250