Learning to Heal

The Author: Luz María Hernández Sáenz is an instructor in the Department of Latin American Studies at the University of Calgary. She received the Fritz Hoffman Memorial Prize for her article, «Smuggling for the Revolution: The Illegal Traffic of Arms, 1912-1914.»

"Mexico's colonial medical practitioners - physicians, surgeons, pharmacists, phlebotomists (bleeders), midwives, nurses, herbalists, those licensed or otherwise - take on shape and substance in this ground-breaking study. The societal contradictions and clashes shaping colonial Mexico and which led to Independence: between European, royal, formal impositions, and emerging local and regional prehispanic traditions; between race, class, and gender; between the emerging ideas (Enlightenment science) shaping medical knowledge and those being discarded (Hippocratic and Galenic theories); between religious and secular jurisdictions; between the 'peninsulares' and the 'criollos' - they provide the frames of reference Hernández Sáenz uses in presenting professional portraits of the different groups of practitioners. Based on a meticulous and judicious study of primary archival documents, she opens new windows to our understanding of colonial Mexico and its medical practitioners - their origins, training, practice, and resulting medical, economic, and social consequences." (Herman W. Konrad, President, Canadian Association for Mexico Studies)