Medicine and Indigenous Mexican Culture After the Conquest
Session Number
Project ID: HIST 01
Advisor(s)
Dr. Eric Smith; Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
Dr. Sheila Wille; Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
Discipline
History
Start Date
19-4-2023 10:20 AM
End Date
19-4-2023 10:35 AM
Abstract
Historians have explained how Indigenous Mexican society changed throughout the colonial period: Indigenous people, particularly the Nahuas, adopted Spanish practices which were “close enough” to preexisting Indigenous practices. In language, Nahuatl initially acquired words for new, Spanish concepts by broadening the meaning of existing words through a “mistaken identity.” Similarly, Nahua political and religious systems which were “close enough” to Spanish systems were preserved in many respects for a long time after the Spanish conquest, often with little more than a Spanish rechristening. In medicine, historians have suggested that Indigenous Mexican cultures incorporated an Old World hot-cold humoral system because of a resemblance to a dualism in the pre-Conquest Nahua worldview.
This project reexamines historians’ arguments that an accident of similarity between various aspects of Indigenous and Spanish cultures led to an inevitable assimilation of native language, religion, politics, and medicine into colonial structures. Rather, in the face of colonization, Indigenous groups actively preserved what fundamental aspects of their cultures they could, especially in the case of medicine.
Medicine and Indigenous Mexican Culture After the Conquest
Historians have explained how Indigenous Mexican society changed throughout the colonial period: Indigenous people, particularly the Nahuas, adopted Spanish practices which were “close enough” to preexisting Indigenous practices. In language, Nahuatl initially acquired words for new, Spanish concepts by broadening the meaning of existing words through a “mistaken identity.” Similarly, Nahua political and religious systems which were “close enough” to Spanish systems were preserved in many respects for a long time after the Spanish conquest, often with little more than a Spanish rechristening. In medicine, historians have suggested that Indigenous Mexican cultures incorporated an Old World hot-cold humoral system because of a resemblance to a dualism in the pre-Conquest Nahua worldview.
This project reexamines historians’ arguments that an accident of similarity between various aspects of Indigenous and Spanish cultures led to an inevitable assimilation of native language, religion, politics, and medicine into colonial structures. Rather, in the face of colonization, Indigenous groups actively preserved what fundamental aspects of their cultures they could, especially in the case of medicine.