Medical pluralism in central Mexico in the early colonial period
This thesis evaluates medical pluralism in central Mexico during the early colonial period, surveying the medical landscape to recognise spaces for and evidence of, medical assimilation and exchange between Spanish, Indian and Black populations. Recognising that medicine during this period was a combination of science, religion and superstition, it explores the dynamic between licensed and unlicensed medicine, evaluating the ways in which they served and were served by mixed colonial populations. The domain of the curandero is re-evaluated in order to better understand what the role and status of such practitioners were, and what the term actually meant to colonial people. Surveying colonial medicine within the context of the attempted imposition of medical structures from mainland Spain, this study demonstrates the ways in which -despite the disenfranchisement of large sectors of colonial society - the huge diversity of personal and cultural preferences coupled with the profound significance attached to healthcare, saw all people, slaves included, able to exert agency in their own healthcare. In short this is an interpretive historical study of medicine in Mexico, combining archival evidence with a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, applied to understand the medical meeting of all colonial peoples, including Blacks, during the early colonial period, which has, to date, been underesearched.
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