UVlibrariesUniversitat de València Logo del portal

  • Fotografía sala lectura biblioteca

Antonio Lecha-Marzo Martínez (Porac (Filipines), 7/2/1888 – Sevilla, 19/5/1919)

 

Antonio Lecha-Marzo Martínez

He was born in the Philippines, where his father (a Spanish military officer) was stationed, but when his father died, his uncle Luis Lecha Martínez, professor of forensic medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in Valladolid, took over his guardianship. This influence would mark his professional life, as he would devote himself to medicine, and more specifically to the fields of forensic medicine and criminal and judicial anthropology.

Thus, he studied medicine in Valladolid with brilliant results (he was awarded the National Prize for his degree), and began his early research activity, as evidenced by the fact that only three years after starting his degree he was already publishing an article (on a new method he had devised for the medico-legal diagnosis of blood stains) in one of the most prestigious international journals in the discipline: the Archivio di Psichiatria, Medicina Legale ed Antropologia Criminale, directed by the pioneer Cesare Lombroso.

When he finished his degree he obtained a position as a military health doctor, as well as a scholarship from the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios, which allowed him to extend his research training in Turin and, above all, in the belgian city of Liège, stays that would result in the publication of his work in various journals and the preparation of his doctoral dissertation Los dibujos papilares de la palma de la mano como medio de identificación (Papillary drawings of the palm of the hand as a means of identification).

On returning to Spain he was assigned to the Military Hospital in Madrid and also worked as an assistant lecturer in Legal Medicine at the Central University and as a lecturer in dactyloscopy at the Police School in Madrid, until he was mobilised to go to the Moroccan War.

After passing to the reserves, he held the chair of Legal Medicine in Granada and participated in the creation of the Institute of Legal Medicine, Toxicology and Psychiatry in Madrid. Finally, he moved to Seville, where he died suddenly (victim of the 1918 flu) at the early age of thirty-one.

In the academic field, it can be said that Lecha-Marzo was one of the great specialists in forensic medicine in Spain (especially in the study and detection of blood stains), as well as being interested in criminal anthropology and the new identification techniques advocated by Lombroso and Bertillon. The large number of articles he published in just a few years (as well as a couple of manuals) and his correspondence with prominent doctors and criminologists of the time, such as Juan Peset Aleixandre, Federico Olóriz, the Argentinian Juan Vucetich and José Chabás, bear witness to this importance.

Finally, it is worth remembering the popular echo of his participation in the resolution of the "Cuesta de Rosario case", which took place in Seville, where his research provided information on the identity and cause of death of the skeletal remains found in a house in this street.

 

More biographic information

 

Donation

In 2017, Lecha-Marzo's family donated his personal library to the Biblioteca Historicomèdica "Vicent Peset Llorca". Although there was no direct link between the doctor and this institution or the city of Valencia, the fact that ours is a library specialising in the history of medicine and science, as well as the fact that we hold the Peset Fund, which includes materials by Juan Peset Aleixandre, a specialist in forensic medicine who corresponded with Lecha-Marzo himself, made the incorporation of this donation to our collections a wise choice.

On the occasion of the donation, the exhibition (organised by the López Piñero Institute) "Antonio Lecha-Marzo: science, medicine and law at the beginning of the 20th century" was mounted, and it was attended by his granddaughter Carmen de Meer Lecha-Marzo, author of a doctoral dissertation which is one of the best biographical works on him.

As for the donation itself, it is made up of around 600 records, of which some 200 correspond to medical monographs. There is also an important part of offprints of journal articles, both European (Spanish, Italian, Belgian, Portuguese and French) and Latin American (Argentinian, Cuban and Brazilian) and, finally, archival material including some photographs and clippings about himself and an abundance of correspondence with other specialists and doctors of the time. 

The works that make up the donation bear this holding reference:

 

Works at the Catalogue of the University of Valencia

Follow the links to find out what works we have in the University of Valencia libraries:

 

Bibliographic selection as author

Monographs

Journal articles

  • “Un nuovo processo per ottenere i cristalli d’emocromogeno e di jodo-ematina”. Archivio di Psichiatria, Neuropatologia, Antropologia criminale e Medicina legale. 1905, v. 26, n. 5, p. 663-665  

  • “Un nuevo procedimiento para el diagnóstico médico legal de las manchas de sangre”. Revista de Medicina y Cirugía Prácticas. 1906, v. 70, n. 923, p. 409-417

  • “Nuevos estudios sobre la corteza del cerebelo”. Revista de Medicina y Cirugía Prácticas. 1907, v. 76, n. 989, p. 177-188; n. 990, p. 217-226

  • “Étude médico-légale sur les actes de bestialité : l'épreuve de Barberio peut-elle servir au diagnostic différentiel entre le sperme de l'homme et celui du chien? : recherches expérimentales”. Revue de Médecine Légale. 1908, v. 15, p. 161-167

  • “Sulla somiglianza delle corteccie cerebrale e cereberrale”. Archivio di Psichiatria, Neuropatologia, Antropologia criminale e Medicina legale. 1908, v. 29, n. 1-2, p. 69-74

  • “Mais algumas considerações sobre os novos métodos para o diagnóstico da morte real”. Gazeta Médica da Bahia. 1908-1909, v. 40, p. 232-45

  • “Sui nuovi procedimenti di Corin-Stockis e De Dominicis per il riconoscimento dei nemaspermi nelle macchie”. Risveglio medico. 1909, n. 93

  • “Los últimos progresos en la identificación de los reincidentes: Dactiloscopia Vucetich y Dactiloscopia Olóriz”. Gaceta Médica del Sur de España. 1910, v. 28, n. 641-646 i 648,  p. 50-55, 81-89, 101-106, 136-137, 155-163, 181-187, 228-234

  • “Recherches sur la pathogénie des ecchymoses endocardiques”. Archives Internationales de Médecine Légale. 1912, v. 3, n. 3, p. 280-288

  • Con MAESTRE, T. “Nouvelle technique pour la spectroscopie et la cristallographie du sang”. Archives Internationales de Médecine Légale. 1914, v. 5, n. 1, p. 49-53

  • “Los dibujos papilares de la palma de la mano como medio de identificación”. Anales de la Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas. 1916, v. 16, p. 29-70, làm. 1-5