Medicine in a ‘new’ world:
the Columbian Exchange
HI31L
Lecture 2
Medicine in a New World
I. The Columbian ExchangeA. Pre-Columbian MedicineB. Contact: Conquerors, Settlers and Slaves1. America the Inferior: Virgin
Soil and “weak” races2.Triangle Trade/ South Atlantic
System
II. Responses and interventions in Colonial MedicineA. Humoral MedicineB. Innovation and resistance
Pre-Columbian Medicine
“There was then no sickness: they had no aching bones; they had then no high fever; they had then no small pox; they had then no burning chest; they had then no abdominal pain; they had then no consumption; they had then no headache. At that time the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here.”
Chilam Balam (a Yucatan Indian), of Chumayel, after Conquest.
Indigenous Medical Institutions
South America (Mixed settlement pattern, urban +
rural)Botanical gardens/zoosIsolation compounds for the
contagious sickState granary networkDistant water supplies for citiesCollection of refuse and night-soilMedical facilities for soldiersDeliberate ‘bioprospecting’ in
conquered areasTrade in medicinals
Indigenous Medical Institutions
North America (Settlement pattern at contact
rural/nomadic)Sweat lodgesDistinct class of medical
practitionersTrade in medicinals
Conquest of Mexico
The ‘Columbian exchange’
To Americas From Americas
Smallpox, measles, malaria (falciparum), plague, tuberculosis
Syphilis (probably), yellow fever, yaws
Cattle, horses, wheat, bananas, coffee, sugar cane
Potatoes, tomatoes. maize, squashes, peppers, tobacco
African slaves, European conquistadors, settlers
Precious metals
North America
Crops Cals/HectareMaize 7.3Potato 7.5Yams 7.1Cassava 9.9
Europe
Crops Cals/HectareRice 7.3Wheat 4.2Barley 5.1
Oats 5.5
Eating the New World, Building the Old
Contact: Brave New World or America the Inferior
This coastline, too, was swarming with people and it would seem, if we are to judge by those areas so far explored, that the Almighty selected this part of the world as home to the greater part of the human race.
God made all the peoples of this area, many and varied as they are, as open and as innocent as can be imagined … utterly faithful and obedient both to their own native lords and to the Spaniards in whose service they now find themselves. … At the same time, they are among the least robust of human beings: their delicate constitutions make them unable to withstand hard work or suffering and render them liable to succumb to almost any illness, no matter how mild. Even the common people are no tougher than princes or than other Europeans born with a silver spoon in their mouths and who spend their lives shielded from the rigours of the outside world.
A Short Account of the Destruction of the IndiesBartolome de las Casas, 1542
Aztec Smallpox (Codex Mendoza)
Contact: Conquerors, Settlers and Slaves
America the ‘inferior’
“There was no Indian town where hostility was shown [to the settlers] ‘but that within a few days after our departure from every such town, that the people began to die very fast and many in a short space…the disease was also so strange that they neither knew what it was nor how to cure it; the like, by report of the oldest men in the country never happened before time out of mind.’” Settler account, 1587, Roanoak Island.
Contact: Conquerors, Settlers and Slaves
America the ‘inferior’ “The Indians died on heapes, as they lay in their houses, and the living that were able to shift for themselves would run away and let them dye, and let their carcases ly above the ground without burial … and the bones and skulls upon the several places of their habitations made such a spectacle after my coming into those partes that as I traveled in the forest near the Massachusetts, it seemed to me a new-found Golgatha.’
Traveller’s account, 1622, Massachusetts
Contact: Conquerors, Settlers and Slaves
America the ‘inferior’
“The Indians die so easily that the bare look and smell of a Spaniard causes them to give up the Ghost” – 1699
Contact: Conquerors, Settlers and Slaves
America the ‘inferior’
“We have no discoveries in the materia medica to hope for from the Indians in North-America. It would be a reproach to our schools of physic, if modern physicians were not more successful than the Indians, even in the treatment of their own diseases.”
Dr. Benjamin Rush 1798
Triangle Trade/ South Atlantic System
“At the same time, they are among the least robust of human beings: their delicate constitutions make them unable to withstand hard work or suffering and render them liable to succumb to almost any illness, no matter how mild.”
Bartolome de las Casas, 1542
The Triangle Trade• Trade goods, weapons, later
rum, from Europe and North America to Africa (to buy slaves)
• Slaves from Africa to North and South America (to labour on plantations)
• Raw materials produced with slave labour to North America, Europe (to feed industrial growth and production and pay for more slaves)
Responses and interventions in Colonial
Medicine• Humoural Medicine
Systemic in concept and approachBased on 4 humours: blood, phlegm,
black bile, yellow bileEach (and thus entire body)
dynamically related to environment, body intakes and excreta, emotions, seasons, stars
Thus treatment highly individualized… at least in theory
Innovation and resistance
•Use of indigenous materia medica and techniques
• Inoculation for smallpox
Useful Websites
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Mendoza
• http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/475030
• http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/if_you_knew_01.html