The Craft of Medicine in Colonial Mexico: The Art and Science of the Apothecary

Paula De Vos, San Diego CA

Investigators

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): I am applying for a grant from the NIH-National Library of Medicine in order to "buy out" my teaching for a semester so that I can devote my time entirely to research and writing in order to prepare a book manuscript for publication. The book is based on my dissertation, which traces the development of pharmacy in colonial Mexico from an early modern artisanal art to a modern health science. Based on archival documentation, it examines four areas of pharmacy in particular - pharmacy regulation, business practices, the preparation of medicines, and the cultural role of medicine in Mexican society - and shows how each underwent a fundamental transformation from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, through which pharmacy emerged as a modern, scientific discipline. The study is significant not only because it treats a little-known area of history of medicine, but also because it challenges traditional assumptions of Spain's 'backwardness" and lack of scientific innovation. In doing so, it ties Mexico and the Spanish Empire generally into a broader, transatlantic narrative of the Scientific Revolution and the development of western science and medicine. Thus this project aims to promote both deeper and broader knowledge of the history of science and medicine in societies outside Europe, and as such will be of value to historians of the health sciences.