Yarí Pérez Marín's examination of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century medical works aims to contextualize the literary and scientific contributions of Spanish writers with experiences in early colonial Spanish America. The work includes analysis of four medical practitioners with varying levels of education and training: Pedro Arias de Benavides, Alonso López de Hinojosos, Agustín Farfán, and Juan de Cárdenas. Studying these authors helps to counter teleological narratives of supremacy in knowledge production. Pérez Marín argues that these practitioners viewed themselves as “voices within a larger conversation on health and the human body” who “contest[ed] the supremacy of emerging marginalising colonial structures” (p. 6). Frustratingly, the imperial motherland failed to see these contributions in the same light.Drawing from extensive primary source material and in-depth historiographical analysis, Pérez Marín offers a contextual interpretation of colonial and imperial discourses that shaped the acceptance, rejection, or ambivalence toward works of science and medicine produced in the New World. The author emphasizes the narrative of civilizational superiority as inhibiting dissemination and cultural acceptance of New World scientific works. Such contributions were so often written off as “local ‘practices’ or ‘traditions’” and thus inherently “unscientific” (p. 10). Pérez Marín analyzes the role of race in the construction of differences between humans; she combines methodologies of both literary and cultural analysis to determine whether these New World works “chose to advance racialised models of human anatomy and physiology” (p. 14).Pérez Marín detects in the work of Pedro Arias de Benavides a growing displeasure with European exclusion of practitioners engaged in empirical work overseas. Benavides's Secretos de Chirurgia (Secrets of surgery), a hybrid surgical manual and book of secrets, offers life-size surgical illustrations and descriptive techniques to detail his myriad treatment of ailments in Honduras and later in Mexico. Benavides strongly emphasizes the role of experience in medical practice, arguing that importing samples of materia medica from the New World to Spain failed to satisfy epistemological standards. As Pérez Marín summarizes Benavides's argument, “In order to know or to speak of new worlds, one had to have lived in them” (p. 25).Pérez Marín's side-by-side comparison of Alonso López de Hinojosos's Svmma, y recopilacion de chirvgia (Surgical compendium) and Juan de Cárdenas's Primera parte de los problemas y secretos marauillosos de las Indias (First part of problems and marvelous secrets of the Indies) analyzes the colonial paradox of anatomy and physiology. Where anatomy emphasized a bodily template essentially free from influence of racial or ethnic background, physiology sought to determine measurable differences between ethnic compositions. The two disciplines diverged against the backdrop of growing mixed-race populations throughout the viceroyalties.Drawing from the colonial paradox established with López de Hinojosos and Cárdenas, Pérez Marín next brings gender and femininity into the discussion. From Agustín Farfán's Tractado breve de anothomia y chirvgia, y de algvnas enfermedades, que mas comunmente suelen hauer en esta Nueua España (Brief treatise on anatomy and surgery, and on some common illnesses found in this New Spain), Pérez Marín traces physiological interpretations of gestational processes that were thought to result in appearances that did not align with notions of femininity or masculinity. Ultimately, Pérez Marín determines that while Farfán's work did not drastically change anatomical or physiological interpretations of the body, it did create a place for women's voices in relation to their health, detailed at length in the Tractado.Finally, Pérez Marín looks more broadly at knowledge circulation between Spain and its empire, citing Cárdenas's critiques of scientific rigor. Like Benavides before him, Cárdenas questioned the superiority of European scientific endeavors that relied on imported specimens. This research from afar could not possibly replace the value of research conducted in situ. Questioning geographical and cultural identity rather than a criollo/peninsular designator, Cárdenas diverged from the narrative of superiority based on birthplace.Pérez Marín's work offers a valuable, rich interdisciplinary analysis of early colonial medical texts and their authors. The author's literary and historical contextualization of political, scientific, and cultural discourses that determined the fate of these men and their work is thorough and engaging. This book will be especially useful for scholars interested in viceregal medicine and circulation of knowledge.
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Dec 1, 2021
Janet Kearney 
Open Access