History of Health and Disease in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1600–1870

Abstract

Health and disease have long animated historical studies of Latin America and the Caribbean, predominantly through the lens of medical science, taken up in modern histories of the region through the politics of public health, the rise of biomedicine, and the professionalization of the medical discipline. This article approaches the history of disease through a broader understanding of health and healing that understands medicine to be fundamentally interconnected with religion, ritual practice, and extra-human relations with the natural world. The authors have chosen studies that trouble chronologies dividing Latin American history into colonial and modern eras. They instead highlight works that show how multiple cosmographies, epistemologies, and other ways of knowing with and beyond biomedicine continued to inform health practices well after independence and the rise of the nation-state. Some of the most important thematic trajectories across these bodies of scholarship are discussed, with emphasis on methodological innovation and impact in the field. Much of the scholarship highlighted here draws on archival sources related to the Inquisition, criminal and ecclesiastical courts, the transatlantic slave trade, municipal records, and correspondence sent and housed in Seville at the General Archive of the Indies (AGI). Included are a mix of canonical texts and newer pieces that have moved the field in exciting and innovative directions. The collections are not intended to be exhaustive but rather suggestive of distinct debates in the subfields we have chosen to highlight. Following the first three sections after the Introduction, which are on primary sources (online collections and published translations), digital research collections, and overviews, the sections are organized alphabetically by title. Cueto and Palmer 2015 (cited under Overviews of Health and Disease in Latin American History) is one of the only comprehensive English-language textbooks on health and disease in Latin American history, though it tends to favor the modern period. In addition, there are several useful overviews and collections that teach well in undergraduate and graduate coursework. The field of early modern Latin American history would greatly benefit from additional overviews and edited collections that take up the role of health and disease in the region, particularly as they intersect with questions of race, gender, sexuality, disability, class, religion, enslavement, and the law.