[Regulation of health care in the Spanish Habsburg Court (1515-1700)]

This article tries to reconstruct the composition of the royal health care system during the government of the Spanish kings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The health professions during this period comprised five institutions: Royal Physicians, responsible for the health of the king, his family and all the staff of the Royal House; the Royal Apothecary, responsible for the preparation, dispensation and storage of medicines; the Royal Distillery Laboratories; the Ladies Infirmary, responsible for the medical care of all the ladies who directly served the queen; and the Royal Chemistry Laboratory, founded for the dispensation of chemical drugs, commonly used in the seventeenth century.