Medicine Worlds: Women and Indigenous Pharmacopeia in Early Modern Mexico

Abstract

“Medicine Worlds: Women and Indigenous Pharmacopeia in Early Modern Mexico” reconstructs the history of Indigenous medicine in New Spain from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. I argue that Indigenous women were central producers of medicinal knowledge during Spanish colonial rule and that place fundamentally shaped the formation and regulation of Indigenous healing systems. Rather than treating colonial medicine as a singular imperial structure centered in Mexico City, this project demonstrates that multiple “medicine worlds” emerged through relationships between women healers, local ecologies, labor systems, Spanish convents and pharmacies, pueblos, and frontier regions. Contrary to historiographical frameworks that emphasize medical mestizaje or the rapid fuzzy incorporation of Indigenous medicine into colonial practice, this project demonstrates that Indigenous medical systems persisted as distinct epistemological worlds well into the eighteenth century. Centered on peyote and other prohibited medicinal plants, “Medicine Worlds” traces how colonial authorities criminalized Indigenous healing through the Mexican Inquisition and the emerging medical profession. Early Spanish medicine relied on systems of surveillance and appropriation rather than reciprocal exchange to construct science. Ultimately, this dissertation reframes the history of medicine in early modern Mexico by positioning Indigenous women as foundational producers of medicinal knowledge and community care while demonstrating that struggles over Native healing practices were inseparable from struggles over land, labor, and authority in the many medicine worlds of colonial Mexico.