The Health of the Soul: Religious Guidance and Medical Practice in Early Colonial Mexico

doi:10.1017/9781108976893.006

Chapter 5 - The Health of the Soul: Religious Guidance and Medical Practice in Early Colonial Mexico

from Part II - Body

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2022

Yarí Pérez Marín

Edited by

Rocío Quispe-Agnoli and

Amber Brian

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Rocío Quispe-Agnoli: Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Amber Brian: Affiliation:
University of Iowa

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Summary

Though addressed to members of the clergy, the Constituciones del arçobispado y prouincia dela muy ynsigne y muy leal ciudad de Tenuxtitlan Mexico (1556) set aside specific instructions for medical practitioners. Making concessions for surgeons and apothecaries, such as excluding them from fines or allowing them to work on holy days, they were asked to police their patients’ behavior, going as far as to deny follow up care to those who refused confession. Practitioners were also cautioned against prescribing cures for the “good health of the body” that compromised the “good health of the soul.” The religious manuals and vernacular medical texts of sixteenth-century Mexico shared a common language, setting and investment in their emerging community. They followed a prescriptive approach and saw themselves as exercising a corrective social function, capturing in detail the very behaviors they purportedly sought to curtail. This essay examines how physical health and self-discipline were viewed in relation to the colonial body in these sources, considering the ways in which this template was refracted to include the African, indigenous, and female bodies in their pages.

Keywords

Health of the soul soul-body sixteenth-century medical writing Alonso de Montúfar medical practitioners Pope Innocent III Cum infirmitas threat of excommunication Anathomia

Type: Chapter
Information: Latin American Literature in Transition Pre-1492–1800 , pp. 81 - 92

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108976893.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

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