Convulsions, Palsy, and the Spanish Inquisition: Neurologic Cases in an Overlooked Historical Archive

A largely unrecognized feature of the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834) was the mandatory medical evaluation of all defendants, generating a vast archive of clinical documentation that remains almost entirely unexplored by historians of neurology. The institutional need to distinguish genuine illness from malingering and demonic affliction prompted physicians to evaluate neurologic conditions including convulsions, palsy, and behavioral changes. Drawing on published scholarship and targeted searches of the Spanish national archives, we identified over 80 cases related to neurology and neuropsychiatric content. In this article, we analyze 7 of them, for illustrative purposes, involving convulsions (termed aferecía or gota coral), palsy and paralysis (perlesía), and miscellaneous brain pathology (leso de la cabeza, cerebro débil y flaco), documented between 1562 and 1700. These records reveal a tripartite diagnostic framework (physician, surgeon, and exorcist) that evolved over 2 centuries and often favored naturalistic medical explanations. Cases analyzed include the convulsive episodes of King Carlos II, whose symptoms the Suprema (the supreme governing body of the Inquisition) ruled to be natural disease rather than bewitchment, and the case of Fray Mateo de la Puebla, who was absolved on neurologic grounds after his behavioral changes were attributed to acquired CNS disease. The Inquisition archives merit further investigation as a potential source for the history of clinical neurology in the early modern period.