Metl, the maguey: the plant a 1615 Mexican pharmacopoeia said could supply almost everything, and the drink the same monarchy taxed and policed

A Mexican imprint of 1615 counts the uses of the agave the Nahua called metl one by one and says the plant alone could supply almost everything human life needs. A creole naturalist of 1788 claimed more than thirty uses obtained by the Indians; a physician printed a chemical study of pulque in December 1772. The cost is in the same record: the drink was a crown monopoly, and a royal order of 1778 proposed administering the taverns to reduce the drunkenness.