Medicine and Politics in Colonial Peru: Population Growth and the Bourbon Reforms

1 Cultures of Healing in Colonial Lima,1535–1780

15 The seventeenth-century poet Juan del Valle y Caviedes, in his famous work Diente del Parnaso, expressed doubts about both the benevolence and the competence of doctors in colonial Peru. Caviedes portrayed medicine in Peru under Hapsburg rule as an utter disaster, and he claimed it was particularly ridiculed in the capital, Lima. Moreover, Caviedes attempted to persuade readers that true Christian piety, charity, and concerns about healing did little to inspire doctors or shape the provision of medical care in the colony. In his brilliant, hilarious satire written between 1683 and 1691, Lima’s doctors served as pariah figures who excelled in inflicting death with brutal precision rather than in healing or extending life through their work. Caviedes even went so far as to compare doctors to earthquakes, a phenomenon with which Limeños were all too familiar, arguing that they were similar in terms of their destructive potential and the fear they inspired in others. He declared, “The earthquake comes with a warning[:] that you flee from its severity; the doctor does no such thing, because he kills quietly. And when one is thinking that his life is safe, in come the sacristan and the priest with the cross and the choir.” Building on this comparison, he warned that “a syrup from a doctor full of spells does the same thing as a falling building, in that life comes to an end. The cultures of Healing in colonial lima, 1535–1780 1 warren text i-290.4.indd 15 7/23/10 10:42 AM 16 cultures of Healing in colonial lima doctor is a dangerous tremor, a bearded earthquake, a licensed Vesuvius, considering whose severity, may you be afraid.”1 Recognizing the role the Church historically played in the provision of medical care in Peru under the Hapsburgs, Caviedes also satirized priests. He questioned and mocked their roles in assisting the sick on their deathbeds , portraying them as maliciously conspiring with doctors for their own gain. In particular, he accused priests of making treatments that amounted to homicide appear to be nothing more than the tragic, unintended results of the pious, heroic, benevolent work of doctors. Caviedes explained, “It is the priests who cover up for the doctors, since in burying the dead they conceal the doctors’ crimes. Although they collaborate in concealment, they do the opposite of doctors, since they sing throughout town about the man whom the doctors kill. In this the priests possess the philosophers’ stone, because in burial they derive gold and silver from their base acts.”2 By alleging that priests not only hid from view the tragic consequences and failures of Spanish medicine in Peru but also profited from the inability of doctors to cure, Caviedes compared priests’ work to murder and alchemy. He thus sought to denigrate the close relationship that had developed over time between the two professions. Caviedes wrote Diente del Parnaso toward the end of the Hapsburg period, less than two decades before the Bourbons would take power in Spain and begin reorganizing the administration of the colonies. In reality, the practices and professions of healing were far more complex in Peru under the Hapsburgs, and doctors ultimately had more mixed success with their treatments than Caviedes described. The collaboration between doctors and priests was also more extensive and well intentioned. The relations between the two professions, however, grew more tense in the Bourbon period of colonial rule, as the Crown and its representatives took an interest in not only healing and population growth but also reining in the power of the Church. Few historians, however, have documented these shifts in the cultures, politics, and economics of healing before and after the War of Spanish Succession (1701–1714), which brought the Bourbons to power.3 An examination of early medical institutions, beliefs, and treatment practices in Lima reveals that, throughout the Hapsburg period, notions of Christian piety and charity formed the organizational underpinnings of the system of medical care. Lima was home to numerous hospitals and other institutions of healing administered by the Catholic Church when Caviedes published Diente del Parnaso. Notable doctors worked in the hospitals and homes of the city, the university had for more than half a century been warren text i-290.4.indd 16 7/23/10 10:42 AM cultures of Healing in colonial lima 17 training students to serve as physicians, and secular and regular clergy played...