Anatomy in the pages of don quixote

in recent years specialized medical journals have frequently included humanistic studies of a historical, philological, philosophical, ethical or literary nature, showing the mutually beneficial contributions of literature and medicine, and containing references to works where literary and scientific intuition are very closely linked. one of those works is the ingenious knight don quixote of la mancha (el ingenioso hidalgo don quijote de la mancha), the novel by miguel de cervantes saavedra. the work has been interpreted from diverse medical viewpoints, but not from that of the science par excellence at the time it was printed: anatomy. in this essay, a historical review of the most relevant anatomical treatises of the time of cervantes and an analysis of the anatomical terminology used by the author in the novel are made. a total of 154 terms with anatomical signification were found that could be of interest for the knowledge of the development, in the renaissance, of the modern spanish medical terminology.