4 Laboratory medicine and surgical enterprise in the medical landscape of the Eixample district Alfons Zarzoso and Àlvar Martínez-Vidal 1 In October 1899 a lavishly illustrated 39-page printed advertising pamphlet appeared in Barcelona, describing in great detail the technical and archi- tectural features of Dr Cardenal’s ‘casa de curación’ (‘healing house’), a sur- gical clinic founded in the year of the Universal Exhibition of 1888 and now, following the extension and refurbishment of the building, rejoicing in the name of ‘Clinicum’. 2 The pamphlet explained that this little hospital was located in the Eixample district, the main urban extension of the city, very close to Provença Station on the Sarrià railway line. The building, a house with a garden in Passatge Mercader, had been the family home of Salvador Cardenal (1852–1927), a physician who, after graduating from the Barcelona Faculty of Medicine, pursued further training as a surgeon in several Euro- pean cities and became one of the first proponents of Joseph Lister’s antiseptic method in Spain. 3 The pamphlet – clearly addressed to ‘metges de capçalera’ (general practitioners) 4 – gives a thorough description of all the clinic’s services, with interior and exterior plans of the house showing all the facilities: the operat- ing theatres and the annexed laboratories, including the ‘x-ray chamber’, as well as the bedrooms, dining rooms, bathrooms and so on. The final pages 1 We would like to thank Tatjana Buklijas and Thomas Schlich for their insightful and helpful com- ments of draft versions of this chapter.This research has been partly funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad in the frame of the project ‘Hacia la consolidación de las especiali- dades médicas en Barcelona: unidad y división en el saber y la práctica de la medicina (1911–1936)’ (HAR2012–34586). 2 Clinicum. Casa de curación quirúrgica del Dr. Cardenal: noticia descriptiva y extracto del reglamento (Barcelona, 1899). 3 Juan Riera, ‘The dissemination of Lister’s teaching in Spain’, Medical History, 13 (2) (1969): 123–53, pp. 137–40; José Danon, ‘De la antisepsia a la asepsia en la obra de Salvador Cardenal’, Medicina & Historia, 61 (1996): 5–28. 4 Article 12 of the clinic’s Regulations mentions this point explicitly:‘The general practitioner of every patient that is to undergo surgery at the Clinic may, by prior agreement with the Director, be present at and even take part in the operation and subsequently visit his patient, if both of them so wish’. Clinicum, 1899, p. 38.The aim of this article was to guarantee that general practitioners would not lose clients through competition from the clinic. 15041-0018d-1pass-r03.indd 69 05-01-2016 19:08:24