Miscellanies: Dr. Fernando Mendes

<plain_text><page sequence="1">Dr. FERNANDO MENDES The late Dr. Harry Friedenwald, of Baltimore, in a communication to the Society, called attention to Dr. Fernando Mendes and his alleged attendance on Catharine of Braganza while on her journey to England to marry King Charles II, the current statements in connection with which, based mainly on E. H. Lindo's History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal, Lucien Wolf had previously shown to be baseless. Dr. Friedenwald pointed out that, according to Davidson's Catharine of</page><page sequence="2">DR. FERNANDO MENDES 227 Braganza, Catharine in 1692 visited her native country, travelling incognito through France. Immediately on crossing the Spanish frontier she discarded her incognito, and on being taken ill with erysipelas at Mataposuelos, a town in Castile, Dr. Antonio Mendes, physician to the king, was summoned. This story is corroborated by Agnes Strickland in her Lives of the Queens of England, which establishes beyond doubt the identity of Dr. Antonio Mendes. The original error lay in confusing the name of Fernando Mendes with that of Antonio Mendes, who was called in to treat the Queen thirty years after she had left Portugal as a bride and was then returning as a widow. It is worth adding that Fernando Mendes was the inventor of the Aqua d'Ingle terra, a quinine, which he exported from England to Portugal for a number of years. He was probably assisted in this venture by Queen Catharine.</page></plain_text>