Latin American perspectives II; Episode 19 of 38

Latin America perspectives a series of information and comment about Latin America with Dr. C. Harvey Gardner research professor of history at Southern Illinois University. These programs are recorded by station w s r u FM. Here now is Dr. Gardner. For me it came as a sort of climax that suggestion that I be sure to learn whether the hotel doctor spoke English earlier. From one person and another I have been cautioned. Don't eat the lettuce. In fact don't eat any uncooked vegetable on the liquid front. The admonition had been stay away from the water with the laughing rejoinder. Stay close to the beer. All of this in the ears of one departing from Mexico suggested that our southern neighbor is the land of eternal illness of rampaging epidemics. A land lacking sanitation and

hygiene. Doctors and medicine. In this area of life as all others there are in truth many Mexico's. That spectrum in reference to the practice of medicine stretches from the witch doctor of Chiapas with his herbs to the researcher of Mexico City with his beta trans and cobalt bombs concerned with the length and breadth of Medicine in Mexico. There's a new volume titled appropriately just that medicine in Mexico published by the University of Texas press. It is authored by Gordon Bell in collaboration with two Mexican physicians and administrators. This book is indeed a statement of Medicine historically from the Aztec days to the middle nineteen

sixties. Speaking first the Aztecs it is to be remembered that the MEK the incoming Spaniards wrote it once of wild eyed impressions they had of this strange this high civilization that they had come to encounter. They were struck for example by the extreme cleanliness of the people. The cleanliness that found them bathing daily the cleanliness that found the streets and the canals maintained in that fashion as well. They were struck by the fact that there was a botanical garden with thousands of different species of plant life in it in them to know shtetl on now present day Mexico City. They were struck by the fact that this warlike people had more than a little knowledge of surgery and of medicine. Indeed in the field of anesthetics the Aztec Physicians and Surgeons unquestionably were several centuries ahead of the rest of the world.

It was not until eight hundred forty six that William Morton in Boston first publicly demonstrated the original general anaesthetic ether. In contrast when Cortez invaded Mexico in 15:19 the Aztec surgeons already possessed not one but a wide spectrum of long proven narcotics from which they were able to select the anesthetic of choice for any specific surgical procedure or patient. This was the result of three factors. Middle America does have a great wealth of medicinally youthful Flora and to the Aztec emperors had persistently pursued a program of state supported scientific research. Witness that botanical garden and to the experiments by the sacrificial

priests. On a scale never attempted before our sense with narcotics and their effects on humans were revealing and helpful in the realm of anesthetics. Among the numerous things then that the Indians of Mexico had perhaps the most amazing advance they knew was that that is related to medicine a great deal has been said about their skills of a military nature about their weapons about their knowledge in the fields of mathematics and astronomy. But some would say and Gordon Chang among them that the Mexicans the Aztecs greatest contribution to history was under field of medicine. Most specifically in the field of pharmacology find this although their civilization was vanished from the earth. They have benefited by all subsequent generations.

Then came of course as the Spaniards settled three hundred years of colonial rule in the course of which there were a long succession of killer epidemics in the Spanish colony. Witness the sampling in 15 20 as it were almost to greet the incoming Spaniards. A great smallpox epidemic rage throughout most of Mexico. It of course had been introduced by the Spaniards and so was one of their earliest gifts of a negative sort to the native population. Six years later in fifteen twenty six an epidemic of typhus swept the lad the following year a severe yellow fever epidemic hit part of Mexico in 15:30 another typhus epidemic. 15:33. Yet another. Indeed we have a succession of epidemics of smallpox of typhus of influenza of mumps and in that. Condition

which found the Indians without any capacity to withstand these alien diseases even mumps measles were rampant killers among them. Many of these severe epidemics fall within the 16th century and literally decimated wide segments of the native population. But in the course of this the establishment of the Spanish colony there was created what might be called a public health department. The proto made a cutoff. This is established in Mexico City was a tribunals of physicians. A council constituted to supervise and regulate the practice of medicine in all its forms and also to maintain strict vigilance over hygiene and public health. Its president was the head of the Faculty of Medicine of the national university a university which had been founded in the 15 50s. Its many functions were supervised by three doctors who were

appointed by the government. For two year terms each the proto medica. Examined and licensed graduate medical students and anyone else who felt a desire and an ability to practice medicine it selected medical school textbooks and a proto medic inspected and supervised pharmacies regulated the prices simple and compound medicines. Indeed was in charge of trying to control the spread of contagious disease. You sent them that in a true meaning of the word. It was a public health department in those colonial years. The long colonial years stretched out for a full three centuries during which a number of medical firsts were written into the record of Mexico. The first hospital on the American continent was established in Mexico in 15 20 for the first. Sorry I'm on the American continent appeared in Mexico. In either fifteen twenty six or fifteen

twenty eight the first insane asylum on the American continent was a stablished in Mexico. In 15 66 the first medical school in the Western Hemisphere was established in Mexico. The first autopsies were performed in the New World in Mexico in 15 71. In addition the first medical book was written and printed in the North American continent in Mexico in fifteen seventy. The first Assyrian operation in the New World was performed in Mexico in the 1770s And so those three centuries of Spanish colonial rule were not dead dull things from a medical standpoint because New Spain as Mexico was then called had indeed a proud splendid history of medical firsts. Since that time however since Mexico has become independent we have entered upon two phases of medical history for the land to the south of us

the first century of Mexican independence from let us say the 18 20s to the 1920s was an unproductive period from the standpoint of public health and medical science. Medical services being advanced for the people in that lacked. In more recent years there has been not only the laying a foundation stones but a gathering momentum and the momentum has come only in post World War Two years which now makes Mexico in many respects a leader in fields of medical services. One agency in Mexico that has long supported the necessary financial backbone for the public health program has been the National Lottery which since one thousand twenty five has been the only lottery and the income from it has gone to the government in support of nationwide campaigns against epidemic and in Demick

diseases it customarily transfers about 10 million dollars annually for such work to various agencies in Mexico. Today the public health department with the pesos of those Mexicans and foreigners who regularly buy the national lottery tickets is concentrating on a number of diseases Pinta or tuberculosis among others. The lottery I might remind you dates back to 770 and even at that time the income from it was busy fighting smallpox and syphilis. On the basis of U.S. standards if we were to ask what is the true status of Medicine in Mexico today we would have to say and of course in truth one should not apply outside standards to any other country. But nonetheless if we were to think of our standards Mexico still has less than half as many doctors nurses and hospital beds as it needs

particularly in isolated areas. But a number of quite spectacular advances have been made particularly in the last decade. These advances include the construction of a National Medical Center that center as an imposing structure 18 buildings in four solid blocks indeed it is the largest single medical center in the world today with its hospitals its clinics its health centers and many of these with branches are reaching the length and breadth of the land. There has been an admirable expansion of the Social Security program in Mexico. The governments of subsidized education of medical students as advanced as are the standards of the medical profession itself. The volume of Medicine in Mexico is a combination of whimsy and anecdote tied in with historical fact. The author Chanel has spent 12 years in Mexico much of it writing for medical

publications easily almost breezily written. It states the importance of Mexico in pointing out that it is doing what many other underdeveloped countries must do. Medicine in Mexico by Shan Dell is published by the University of Texas press. This was another program in the series Latin America perspectives with Dr S. Harvey Gardner research professor of history at Southern Illinois University. Join us for our next program when Dr. Gardner will comment on another interesting aspect of Latin American affairs. These programs are recorded by station WFIU FM and are made available to this station by the national educational radio network.