DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 2004, 24, 307-358.

José Vicente MARTÍ; Antonio REY (eds.). Antología de textos de Félix Martí Ibáñez, Valencia, Generalitat Valenciana, 2004. ISBN: 84-482-3690-4.

This volume —a challenge to review not only because of the broad scope of articles reproduced but also because of the different stages in the life experience of their author— constitutes the first anthology of Félix Martí Ibáñez’s writings to incorporate texts from the mid-1930s up to the end of his life. Martí Ibáñez, psychiatrist, anarchist doctor and historian of medicine, saw his professional and political activities radically altered upon his exile to New York in 1939, where he lived the rest of his life. The republication of his works falls neatly into the on-going «recuperation of historical memory», particularly of the 1930s workers’ movement, silenced by the Franco regime and the democratic pacts of the transition towards democracy. The post-Civil War period of Martí Ibáñez’s life and writing corresponds to very different realities and aspirations, a period up to 1972, his death, which reflects professional success and, at first sight, concerns very different from those voiced during his «anarchist period». However, the literary style of Martí Ibáñez, florid and expressive, before 1939 and his engaging humanism both continued throughout his life.
We are presented here, therefore, with the life and work of one of the many radicals who were forced to leave Spain, driven out by the advancing fascist troops commanded by General Franco. The mixture of idealism, commitment and, ultimately, tragedy, make for an arresting read. The book opens with an excellent overview, preceded by a brief prologue written by Josep Lluís Barona on the life and times of Martí Ibáñez. The social, political and medical context of the early twentieth century are captured in this essay and their interconnection makes for the impossibility of reading medicine and science as domains unrelated to wider realities. Furthermore, the connections between science, progress, rationalism and anarchism are made explicit. An analysis of his works and a bibliography follows.
The selection of Martí Ibáñez’s works departs with sections of his 1935 thesis on the history of mystical Indian psychology and physiology through to his contributions to anarchist reviews such as the Valencia-based Estudios, to works on the history of medicine and to literary compositions. We learn that from early days, when Martí Ibáñez was a medical student and during his thesis writing, he was, according to his doctoral thesis supervisor E. García del Real, one of the few students who remained behind after class to discuss matters raised during the lecture. We learn of the aspirations of the young, idealistic doctor and, with a degree of prescience unfortunately to be fulfilled too early on, that «Martí Ibáñez, probablemente, verá reducirse considerablemente sus afanes históricos y las posibilidades de realizarlos en un porvenir más o menos remoto. Mientras llegan esos días tristes, dejémosle volar y animémosle con frases de estímulo y de aplauso» (p. 73).
The eclecticism of Martí Ibáñez is displayed by his thesis topic, a testimony to his remarkable knowledge (at the age of 24!) and ability to fuse concerns relating to medicine, literature, social movements and quasi-spiritualism. The literary aspects of his work, often with Cervantine and other seventeenthcentury traits, discussed elsewhere and presented in this volume by Julián Bravo Vega, are seen in short sections reproduced from his novel Yo, Rebelde (1936). His eulogy of Spring’s arrival is typical of his prose: «Sigo mi búsqueda y continuo descubriendo la primavera. La encuentro en la tierra del parquecillo, caliente y del color de miel, en una matuja polvorienta y enfermiza, pisoteada por los chiquillos, que ya lanza dos florecillas azules, en las macetas de geranios que desde el balcón de la Casa de Familia me lanzan su apagada mirada roja (...)» (pp. 97-98).
The combative but always humanistic revolutionary aspects of Félix Martí Ibáñez’s work is well represented here and placed within the context of his appointment by the anarcho-syndicalist CNT to take the role of Director of Sanitat i Assistència Social (SIAS), the Catalan Generalitat department, from late 1936 through to May 1937. During this period, Martí Ibáñez was the architect of the abortion decree of December 1936 (reproduced on pp. 135-142), campaigns against venereal disease and eugenics, and the planned but never apparently realised liberatorios de prostitución. The revolution in medicine and sexuality promoted by the CNT in this period is praised by Martí Ibáñez, not without a degree of triumphalism: «La Revolución ibérica ha significado aparte de la subversión de las antiguas estructuraciones sociales, una renovación de los valores espirituales de nuestro país y la creación de un subsuelo histórico esponjoso de humanismo, sobre el cual florecen nuevas y felices iniciativas» (p. 107). Medical care and hospitals were rationalised and socialised under the CNT (p. 119).
Perhaps one of the most innovative, but to this reviewer’s mind, flawed attempts at history that Martí Ibáñez was to engage in was what would later be termed «psycho-history». His essay Psicoanálisis de la Revolución Social Española (1937) charts the developmental stages of the Revolution from infancy to maturity, passing through the requisite oedipal stage (pp. 157-181). The tragedy of the doomed projects contained in this social revolution, one the most profound to take place in Western history, is brought home by Martí Ibáñez’s article «Y...España», published in the New York review Ariel, Revista de Hechos e Ideas, established by the anarchist doctor in Los Angeles. Ariel forms a bridge with his activity in Spain and urges the world not to forget the Spanish tragedy (p. 37).
Once in the United States the professional activity of Martí Ibáñez takes another turn and one sees a progressive detachment from Spain and from the anarchist movement that once claimed many of his efforts. Despite the occasional article in the exiled CNT’s Solidaridad Obrera Martí Ibáñez now consolidated his position as Director of the Department of Medical History in New York Medical College and wrote extensively on medical history and dedicated many efforts to novel writing. It was necessary, he wrote, to describe, interpret and express the history of medicine. But it was not sufficient to merely recount dates, facts and times; on the contrary, he wrote, «debe ser una presentación de la realidad histórica imaginativa en la forma y realista en el contenido, si se desea convertir la historia en lo que Ortega y Gasset llama entusiasta intento de resurrección» (p. 225).
On reading this extraordinary collection of works by Félix Martí Ibáñez one cannot but be struck time and time again by the overt commitment to a better world, through the arts and through the practise of enlightened medicine that is contained in every word that Martí Ibáñez wrote. Finally, one cannot but smile and muse when Martí Ibáñez talks of the contents of his review MD as an elaborate dish composed of rice and other ingredients, one that far surpassed the standard but not-so-humble Valencian paella («Ese proceso de cocina literaria es comparable al realizado en Valencia, donde se prepara el arroz a banda, un arroz superior a la enciclopedia policroma que es la paella y a la acuarela que es el arroz con pollo») (p. 218). While the milieu in which Martí Ibáñez moved in the 1930s —amongst revolutionaries— altered (he was photographed alongside members of «high society» such as Gina Lollobrigida), the dream still remains: «Con este espíritu, el generoso aliento del médico norteamericano y las humildes pero sublimes herramientas de la palabra y la imagen sobre la inmaculada albura de la página de papel, MD continuará dando vida a la urdimbre de un ensueño» (p. 223).

RICHARD CLEMINSON
University of Bradford