The Protomedicato of the Indies (Recopilación, libro V, título 6)

The law that licensed medicine in Spanish America. Its opening piece is a 1570 instruction sending protomédicos across the Atlantic with orders to take the testimony of every physician, surgeon and herbalist, Spanish and Indian alike, to trial the remedies and to write the natural history of the province. The same título makes the professors of medicine at Mexico and Lima the licensing authority — and exempts Indian towns from the licensing rule.