Download Aztec - IICT

 Aztec Medicine
Historical Background: The chronicles of the Spanish conquerors describe in detail the food habits of the Aztec elites feeding, for instance Moctezuma’s
diet. They help us to understand how they lived, from what diseases they suffered and how native populations cured them. Chicken, pheasant, partridge,
quail, duck, deer, pork, as well as small birds and doves, hares and rabbits completed meals. The consumption of human meat is reported.
Nowadays, Tenochtitlan is the area occupied by the historical centre of the Mexican capital, Mexico City. Its inhabitants owned a fine variation of additional
vegetable proteins such as maize (Zea mays) and beans (frijoles). While on the one hand it is almost impossible to know what the large majority of the
population ate, there is a consensus amongst specialists regarding the lack of milk producing animals, which prompted the Aztec tradition of kneading corn
to cook it with lime – mixtamal - in order to provide them with the indispensable calcium.
Scale model of Tenochtitlan – city of the Aztecas or Mexicas (2004) Ethno-Medicine: Fevers (calenturas), pulmonary tuberculosis, diarrhoea,
intestinal parasitosis, haemorrhoids, rheumatism, cough and catarrh, besides skin
problems (scabies, boils) and eye diseases (glaucoma, conjunctivitis and
cataracts) seem to have been the most reported or relevant diseases, according to
the historical documentation that was studied. Chicalote and maize were very
popular medicinal plants. Whereas on the one hand there are no reports regarding
devastating outbreaks of epidemics until the sixteenth century, on the other hand
diseases such as chickenpox, measles, leprosy and typhoid killed many Indians,
just like syphilis did amongst Europeans. Human beings were regarded as a
microcosm containing all the parts of the universe. Wind or water spirits might
provoke several illnesses. The rain god and lord of the waters, who was also
called other different names, being the most commonly known as Tlaloc, was
credited with provoking the majority of illnesses. The inhabitants of Central Mexico
who worked in chinampas (water based cultivation), were susceptible to fall ill with
colds and diarrhoea as a result of the contact with water contaminated by human
excrements. Tenochtitlan was only three centuries old when Hernán Cortés
conquered it. Bernal Díaz del Castillo compares this city to Rome, Paris and
Constantinople in his Historia de la Conquista de Nueva España. For the 16th
century, he estimated a population around half a million inhabitants.
Chicalote and maize photographed at the
Medicine Museum in Mexico City
(2004)
Chinampa in Xochimilco (East of Mexico City).(2004) Contemporary texts by Fray Juan de Torquemada tell us that baldness was extremely rare among Aztec
people; however, men had thinning beards and moustaches. They had good eyesight, especially at a
distance and had perfect hearing and taste buds. They had great tactile sensitivity but “they were fragile
as far as physical injury and abuse were concerned”. Central Mexico was greatly admired by the
Spanish conquerors for its large diversity and agricultural productivity, since Tenochtitlan was very well
supplied with provisions.
Indian Vision of the Cosmos: The native populations of Central Mexico were tormented by the
possibility that the sun and the world it illuminated could be destroyed. Some authors (Treviño, 2000)
attribute the anthropophagi to the need of keeping alive the power of nature and maintaining the
reproductive cycle of living things. Astral time of the sun and the world was cyclical – four cycles or four
suns corresponding to the four cardinal points, with a fifth sun in the centre, whose fall would announce
the end of many cycles of human life, but it would also mean the beginning of a new era. Thus every
death was just the end of a cycle and the beginning of another. For human beings this meant the
beginning of a new life in the context of an eternal recommencement.