Medical history of Malta / [Paul Cassar].

  • Paul Cassar
Date:
1964 [i.e. 1965]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Medical history of Malta / [Paul Cassar]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    41/632 page 17
    of Sicily was proclaimed. This edict applied also to Malta and Gozo as these islands formed part of the Kingdom of Sicily at the time. The Jews accordingly left Malta and Gozo in the following year and their property was bought by the municipality of Mdina. By the first half of the sixteenth century they were back in Malta but only as slaves in the possession of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem.25 Among these slaves there was an Italian Jew—Sabbato by name—who was a physician. He was freed from slavery in 1574 but before his departure from Malta he had for seven years served the knights and the people with ‘all diligence and faith’ and treated ‘all those who went to him with attention and solicitude and in a good and praiseworthy manner’.26 In the seventeenth century the surveillance of the Jews in Malta was exercised by the Inquisitor and among the restrictions imposed upon them by the synodal ordinations of 1647 was die prohibition against the practice of medicine. Christians were not allowed to seek treatment at the hands of Jews or to make use of drugs acquired from Jews under penalty of excommunication; while those Jews who transgressed these laws were punished by the infliction of a public whipping.27 The first recorded physician of undoubted Maltese origin is Dr. Joseph Callus or Callusius according to his Latinised signature. As a medical man his story is only known to us in bare outline for he has come down in history more as an adventurer and, in the end, as a national hero than as a physician. His character has remained so elusive that up to very recent times even his name was a matter of controversy. In fact he is traditionally known as Matthew Callus but it has now been established that his real name was Joseph.28 He was born at Zurrieq at the beginning of the sixteenth century, probably between 1500 and 1510. It seems that at first he meant to join the priesthood but when he had already reached the stage of cleric he changed his mind and began studying medicine instead. We do not know where he studied or when he qualified though we may not be far wrong in supposing that he pursued his medical education in Sicily. In fact during this period Maltese young men who wished to join a profession usually went to Sicily for their studies; it was only from the sixteenth century onwards that they began to frequent also the schools of Naples for jurisprudence and medicine and of Rome for theology.29 In 1530 we hear of Callus practising in Syracuse where he had made a name for himself. At this time the Order of St. John of Jerusalem with Grandmaster L’Isle Adam at its head was in Syracuse making preparations for its embarkation to Malta. Callus appears to have joined the medical 25 Archives 430, fol. 256t; Archives 432, fols. 233 & 256, Royal Malta Library. 26 Archives 435, fol. 245t, Royal Malta Library. 27 Mifsud, A., op. cit., pp. 18 and 20. 28 Zarb, S., ‘Matthew Callus’, Scientia, 1945, xi. 50. Galea, J., ‘Matthew Callus. A Myth?’, Scientia, 1945, xi. 63. Gatt, J., ‘It-tabib Callus’, Birgu, February 5th to 21st, 1945. 29 Ferres, A., op. cit., p. 144.
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