Juan Huarte de San Juan

Juan Huarte de San Juan or Juan Huarte y Navarro (1529 – 1588) was a Spanish physician and psychologist.

He was born at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (Lower Navarre) toward the end of 1529 or beginning of 1530, and was educated, first, at the university of Huesca. He then went on to the University of Alcalá, where he received his doctorate in medicine in 1560.

Though it appears doubtful whether he practiced as a physician at Huesca, Huarte distinguished himself by his professional skill and heroic zeal during the plague which devastated Baeza in 1566. For a very short period of time, he was appointed doctor by the Cathedral Chapter in 1573. After six months of holding this position, he was fired when he left without permission to request licenses for printing his magnum opus, Examen de ingenios para las sciencias (The Examination of Men's Wits) or "The Examination of Talents for the Professions."

In his personal life, he married a woman named Águeda, and they had three children: Antonia (born between 1568-1576), Águeda, and Luis.

Huarte died in Linares in 1588.

Huarte published the first edition of his Examen de ingenios para las ciencias (The Examination of Men's Wits) in 1575, which won him a European reputation, and was translated by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Despite its initial proscription by the Inquisition, copies of the Examen were found in many of Barcelona's public and private libraries (including those of Joaquín Setantí, Jeroni Tarrassa, Joan Nadal de Prats, Pau Ignasi de Dalmases and the library of the Jesuit school). Though now superseded, Huarte's treatise is historically interesting as the first attempt to show the connection between psychology and physiology, and its acute ingenuity is as remarkable as the boldness of its views. After his death, a second, revised and expurgated (by the Inquisition) version was published. Between 1575 and 1800, sixty different editions of Examen were published. During the 16th, 17th and 18th century, the Examen was translated into six European languages: French, Italian, English, Latin, German and Dutch.Richard Carew was the translator of Examen de Ingenios into English, basing his translation on Camilli's Italian version. (This book is the first systematic attempt to relate physiology with psychology, though based on the medicine of Galen. Four editions of this translation were published: in 1594, 1596, 1604 and 1616.)

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