Nineteenth century zootherapy in Benedictine monasteries of Brazil.

Rômulo R.N Alves,Maria F.T Medeiros

doi:10.1590/0001-3765202020181113

Abstract

Research on the past use of animals in medicine, particularly in Brazil, is still scarce. This work aimed to perform a dialogical analysis of information retrieved from historical documents composed in the nineteenth century about the therapeutic use of animal species in Benedictine monasteries in Brazil and their contemporary medicinal applications. Cross-referencing of seven written codices from the nineteenth century Benedictine monasteries infirmaries was performed for taxonomic identification and with therapeutic indications. Animal species provided 13 zootherapeutic resources, which were related to 17 therapeutic indications. Insects, birds and mammals concentrated the greatest number of pharmaceutical actions (37%, 32% and 16% of the therapeutic indications). Medicinal animals used in the past are species commonly applied in the European medicine over centuries. This reveals that the practiced medicine in Benedictine monasteries was influenced by medical concepts from Europe. Also, it shows that still today this European medicine is the basis of therapeutic practice. Such research is essential for a better scientific understanding of the history of medicine, focusing on how different cultures have contributed to the actual therapeutic practice. In this way it is possible to trace a history zootherapy in Brazil, demonstrating the persistence of their use over the time.

Highlights

Humans groups of diverse backgrounds used and continue to use medicines, spells and amulets from animal products, such as bones, beaks, claws, bird-wing spurs, nails, shells, teeth, lard, bezoars, excrement, etc., for use in all kinds of medicine systems
Of the animals whose taxonomic identities could be tracked at the species level, the classes from which they, and their resources, came from and in which are concentrated the greatest number of pharmaceutical actions, were Insecta, Aves and Mammalia (37%, 32% and 16% of the therapeutic indications, respectively) (Table II)
The records of the use of zootherapeutic resources proved the importance and antiquity of the use of medicinal animals in Olinda and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and reinforced the historical record verified in other works left by medical doctors and naturalists of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Summary

Introduction

Humans groups of diverse backgrounds used and continue to use medicines, spells and amulets from animal products, such as bones, beaks, claws, bird-wing spurs, nails, shells, teeth, lard, bezoars, excrement, etc., for use in all kinds of medicine systems. A considerable number of printed and handwritten sources, which constitute valuable tools for research into the interrelationships that have been established between people and animals of different environments and over a long historical time, are available. These documentary sources preserve information about the concepts that different human societies had regarding the application of animal resources in the past. In the case of Brazil, documents that portray the local importance and economic potential of animal species and, in particular, the application of these resources to human health, were written from a European point of view. Testimonies of this history can be found, for example, in the treatises of Gabriel Soares de Souza

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