![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Notes
1. The writing of this piece was made a pleasure due to the insight and support of Miruna Achim and of Matthew Crawford, with whom I have shared many enjoyable and fruitful electronic “conversations.” I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for providing valuable bibliographic suggestions and for offering a lively challenge to some of the argumentation contained herein.
2. AGN/M Tierras Vol. 3272, Exp. 7.
3. AGN/M Civil, Leg. 143, 2a Pte., Exp. 9/19.
4. In this way, the findings of this article both support and in some ways refute those of Elias Trabulse, who has written extensively on the history of science in Mexico. According to Trabulse (Los orígenes 42–45 and Historia de la ciencia, 42–45) medicine and the life sciences generally adhered to a thoroughly traditional, Galenic system throughout most of the colonial period. My archival findings for the pharmacy, however, indicate that despite a continued acceptance of Galenic principles to explain disease and the function of medicines, there was significant innovation in how these medicines were prepared and from which substances beginning in the seventeenth century.
5. See Moran Chemical Pharmacy, “A Survey”, and Distilling Knowledge; Debus, English Paracelsians, The Chemical Philosophy, French Paracelsians, and Chemistry and Medical Debate; Multhauf, “John of Rupescissa,” “Significance of Distillation,” and Origins of Chemistry.
6. CitationRalph Bauer, referring to the work of CitationJosé Antonio Mazzotti, points out their somewhat “ambiguous” status within the imperial system as “neither colonized nor colonizers but rather colonials, who often (though not always) stood apart from the geo-political interests of the imperial metropolis and from what post-colonial criticism has come to conceptualize as the colonized “subaltern …” With regard to their role in science, however, I would make the case that they were more closely tied to the European “Republic of Letters”, a transnational intellectual community, than is often thought. José Alzate y Ramírez, for example, a creole naturalist New Spain who sought to resist the imposition of the Linnean classificatory system (and is thus often championed by historians seeking to highlight the vitality of Mexican colonial science) was a member of the French Académie des Sciences. Moreover, an analysis of the material included in the periodical he edited the Gazeta de Literatura de México, reveals that he had access to and published excerpts from periodicals across Europe, thus “demonstrating the way in which Alzate played an active part in the international Republic of Letters …” (CitationClark 174).
7. In the words of Ralph Bauer (2), “the early modern changes in Western knowledge cannot be understood in terms of a one-directional ‘impact’ of the New World upon the history of the Old, let alone upon particular national histories; rather, they suggest that modernity is the product of the complex and inextricable connectedness of various places and histories, of the way in which these places acted upon each other.” I thank Matthew Crawford and an anonymous reader for bring this work to my attention.
8. AGN/M Real Fisco de la Inquisición, Vol. 29, Exp. 11
9. AGN/M Archivo Histórico de Hacienda, Vol. 1943, Exp. 18
10. The medicines were provided from the period from November 1644 to October 1645. Despite the apothecary's calculations that the medicines were worth 1300 pesos, the Protomedicato claimed that he was only owed 633 pesos for the medicines. AGN/M Bienes Nacionales, V. 420, Exp. 20
11. I tallied up the first 53 prescriptions, which consisted of 102 medicines altogether, and 45 different kinds. Of those 102, the most common were medicines made from borrage (13), from endive (10), rodomellis (9), rose (9), coriander (9), absynth (6), feniculi (5), fumaria (3), sweet almonds (3).
12. Real Academia Española, Diccionario de autoridades, “Virtud.” A virtue was “the faculty, potency, or activity within things, used in order to produce or cause a particular effect. The author gives an example of the use of “virtue” in its medicinal sense in the context of this sentence: “Hasta en los palos, y maderas puso esta virtúd curativa como el palo de China” or “Into the twigs and wood [of trees] was put this curative virtue, as in the [the medicine] palo de China.”
13. I am making this assumption—I have found little material on early modern or colonial kitchens, but what I have found corroborates my assumptions. Moran discusses how seventeenth-century English authors sometimes “bound cookery with pharmacy,” which supports my argument; however “cookery” also involved distillation, which was considered to be in the realm of “women's work,” while I am arguing that for the pharmacists the use of distillation signified a distinct shift to specialized (al)chemical practices (Distilling Knowledge 62–63).
14. To get a sense of the prices of these instruments, the average cost of a bottle, flask, or vial in this time period was between one and three reales (eight reales equaling one peso) depending on size; a mortar and pestle was about six reales, although there was one valued at twenty-four pesos; and most utensils did not exceed two reales in value.
15. AGN/M Real Fisco de la Inquisición, Vol. 29, Exp. 11. There were some compounds, such as Agrippa Ointment, described below. There is one Mercury Ointment, but, as described below, this was actually an ancient remedy.
16. AGN/M, Archivo Histórico de Hacienda, Vol. 1943, Exp. 18.
17. AGN/M, Bienes Nacionales, Volume 420, Expediente 20
18. I have made it a general practice to capitalize the names of medical preparations in order to distinguish them from the substances that comprised them.
19. The descriptions of how to prepare Don Bernabé's medicines were all taken from Palacios (1706), Books 2 and 3.
20. The idea of a fifth essence derived from Aristotelian cosmology, in which the earth was made up of four elements, with the possibility of a fifth celestial element to be found in the heavens. Alchemists sought to formulate this quintessesnce on earth, from earthly substances.
21. Distillation involves placing a liquid in a specialized container that has a heat source underneath and some form of coolant (water or a cooled lid) at the top. The liquid is then heated to the point where one or more of its component parts reaches its boiling point. When its vapor rises, it then comes into contact with the coolant, at which point it again liquifies and then runs through a tube into a separate container. Sublimation involves the same technique, only it is for heating solids instead of liquids.
22. Despite their practical nature, the lists of recipes contained in these pharmacopoeia as well as in “books of secrets” have distinct epistemological significance. William Eamon's ground-breaking study of the latter genre in medieval and early modern Europe argues that these books, which were largely handbooks or manuals containing instructions and “recipes” for practical applications in a number of fields, played a key role in the development of empiricism associated with the Scientific Revolution.
23. This is a tentative argument that needs further research to substantiate it, as there is remarkably little work done on the influence of Paracelsus in Mexico. I am not trying to suggest that Paracelsus had no influence whatsoever, but rather that what was deemed valuable about his work by colonial practitioners was not his cosmology or philosophy, but rather the practical methods he taught, which were derived from the medieval medical alchemists. Other authors have traced the variable reception and influence of Paracelsus in Grell, ed.
24. See CitationGoodman; López Piñero, “Actividad científica”; Martínez Ruiz; CitationRey Bueno and Pérez, “Los destiladores” and “Renovación en la terpeútica real.”
25. This “chemico-Galenic compromise” reflects a larger compromise between Scholastics and “moderns” in the late seventeenth century, as demonstrated by Ruth Hill.
26. There were sixty authors and/or titles altogether, but I was only able to positively identify twenty-two of them (I am still working on further identifications, and for a more expanded discussion of the books in the pharmacies, see De Vos 2001, Ch. 5). In many cases only the author was named, but the author had published more than one book. Without knowing the title of the book, it was impossible to know which one the apothecary possessed. Therefore, where the same author was listed with a title and without, I could not know if it was a duplicate or if the apothecary had some other of the author's books.
27. AGN/M Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 744, Exp. 12 and AGN/M Bienes Nacionales, Vol. 496, Exp. 5.
28. In that year, a royal decree ordered that all apothecaries in the Empire possess a copy of the book and follow its recipes and recommendations in preparing medicine. Thereafter, during inspections, inspectors made sure that the apothecaries were preparing their medicines “according to the recipes in the Matritense.”
29. AGN/M Bienes Nacioinales, Vol. 744, Exp. 12, 1725, Mexico City.
30. I took the modern chemical nomenclature for these medicines from Holmes Citation1989, Appendix 1.
31. It is unfortunate that I do not have any inventories prior to 1725; one from the decades between 1680 and 1725 would have been very helpful to trace more specifically the rate of introduction of these medicines.
32. AGN/M Civil, Vol. 1276, Exp. 14, f. 190r.
33. There were two types of Mercury Ointment in common use. “Usual” Mercury Ointment was the most simple, made by mixing mercury with pig's lard and a more complex Compound Mercury Ointment was made by mixing pig's lard with turpentine, laurel oil, and corn oil, leaving it to steep for six to eight hours, then adding the mercury slowly and stirring until it was mixed well. Beginning in the sixteenth century, it was used primarily for treating syphilis.
34. Felix Palacios, Palestra Pharmaceútica, Parte III, Capítulo IX, pp. 309 and Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, p. 175.
35. AGN/M Civil, Vol. 1276, Exp. 14, f. 194v.
36. AGN/M Civil, Vol. 1276, Exp. 14, f. 194r. One of the doctors actually said of mercury that “it is very probable that it is not a poison,” but that even it if were, it made no difference, because “many poisons are used” in medicine which were quite effective in curing.
37. AGN/M Civil, Vol. 1276, Exp. 14, f. 194r.
38. AGN/M Civil, Vol. 1276, Exp. 14, fs. 195v–196r.
