1530?-1592

Spanish physician and philosopher who, at a time when Jews were being expelled from Spain, wrote of the superiority of Jewish physicians. Using geographic determinism as his rationale, he advocated study in Egypt where Jewish physicians taught because it was an excellent ground to develop the imagination. The assumption was that mental faculties necessary for science required imagination, and Spain's climate was not conducive to studying medicine. Huarte may have been a converso, a Spanish convert to Christianity.