Pestilence and Headcolds

Unlike many first books that have a very narrow focus, this prizewinning history monograph (available on the Gutenberg.e open access Web site) is constructed broadly enough to attract readers of various backgrounds and interests. At the outset the author apologizes for subjects not covered. For example, gender, class, and ethnicity are left for future in-depth study. She warns that her colonial periodization is largely unitary, with little exploration of the nature of changes occurring between 1521 and 1808. In spite of the warnings, she covers these and much more.The author points out that the work “explains the cultures of health and illness that were formed amid the high mortality and morbidity rates during the colonial years of Mexico’s history” (p. xi). The general order is geographical and chronological. In chapter 1 the author focuses on the nature of health and sickness in Mexico, when possible using the words of those experiencing it. She begins in the centuries prior to Spanish contact then moves to the colonial era, starting with the newly introduced acute communicable diseases, moving on to endemic diseases, and ending with everyday ailments. Her sources here and elsewhere are varied: codices, biographies of doctors and medical institutions, personal letters, traveler’s accounts, the rich results of the government ordered relaciones geográficas of the 1570s – 80s, and texts written by health care givers of one kind or another; all these sources are exceptionally rich for colonial Mexico. And she mines the less-used ex-votos, small votive paintings that were often contracted and placed as gifts in shrines dedicated to one of the “saints of the church” most often associated with miraculous cures.In the second chapter the author deftly surveys the range of medical providers, beginning with the “educated,” the nature of training dependent on the cultural complex. For Mesoamerica the emphasis is on the Nahua, and the sources are surprisingly good. For the healers in New Spain she devotes sections to the licensed physicians, barber surgeons, midwives, and the unlicensed lay healers from curanderos to simple peddlers of false cures. She concludes the chapter with a fine analysis of the role of the church in treating the ill, and the nature and effectiveness of hospitals. The subsequent chapter deals with Nahua concepts of the body and the causes of disease, and the richly detailed fourth chapter shifts back to the Europeans. In it she traces the continued impact of humoralism on medicine and the ideas concerning the spread of disease. Her discussion of the supposed impact of noxious airs, as well as lack of moderation in lifestyle (including sin) are well peppered with revealing first-hand accounts. In the last chapter she explores the nature of a “culture of sickness” in which death was never far away. The church’s role in possible miraculous cures is also examined.Caution must be exercised at some points. For example, Fields falls into the common assumption that the catastrophic impact of the 1520 – 21 smallpox epidemic is explained by the long isolation of Amerindians peoples from the Old World pathogens (true) that had “forced the immunological systems of Old World peoples to erect defenses” (false) (p. 9). Although she characterizes some Europeans as “immunological supermen,” they did not, contrary to what she reports, possess “one of the most evolved immunological systems in the world at that time” (p. 10). Instead it was the almost constant exposure to Old World pathogens that helped protect the Europeans from the massive mortality confronting Amerindians in their initial experience with new epidemics. Europeans who lived in isolated communities for three generations without exposure to smallpox, for example, faced the same massive morbidity and mortality that Amerindians experienced. And, for a variety of reasons, the first Europeans reaching American soil lost one-third to two-thirds of their companions within two or three years. The statement that guinea pigs “may have been the source of Chagas’s disease or leishmaniasis” (p. 11) is misleading at best, and the assumption that humans did not live in close contact with llamas and alpacas, and that their herds were never as large as European herds, both arguments made by Jared Diamond, are unfounded. As Jorge Flores Ochoa has pointed out, herds of llamas and alpacas reached 50,000 head and remained numerous even following their destruction by the Spanish conquest and civil wars in the central Andes. Although Fields analyzed numerous descriptions of the symptoms and devastation of the epidemics of 1545 – 48 and 1576 – 80, she did not question the recent thesis of Rodolfo Acuña-Soto and others that the cause was native American hemorrhagic fevers, likely carried by rodent vectors, rather than the commonly assumed Old World typhus.The advantage of the e-book venue is immediately apparent in comparing the standard book format published by Columbia University Press with the online version. Due to cost, publishers are increasingly reluctant to include color illustrations, maps, and sometimes complex tables. While the print volume contains no illustrations, the open access version (http://www.gutenberg-e.org) is filled with full-color illustrations, some from Nahua codices, as well as colonial ex-votos, which would not be feasible to include in a standard book. The quality and accessibility of both illustrations and text makes the book convenient for advanced surveys as well as seminars, and suitable for the undergraduate as well as the advanced student. In sum, Fields provides one of the best broad introductions available on medical theory and practice in colonial Mexico

Archaeology · Colonialism · Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Government (linguistics) · History · Latin American history and culture

• Adna evidence of the introduction of infectious diseases in the Americas

  Open Access•Alexander F More•Les Nouvelles de l archéologie•2022

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