Juan de Barrios, Verdadera medicina, cirugia y astrologia (Mexico, 1607)
A physician's manual printed in Mexico City in 1607, licensed by the protomedico of New Spain, whose stated purpose is to let people treat themselves in places that have no one to cure them. Its index of remedies is organised by complaint and prescribes Mexican plants under their Nahuatl names, priced in reales; its second book renders the herbs of Francisco Hernandez eight years before the Mexican edition usually credited with it.
Why this wins its question: English-language accounts of American materia medica move from Monardes in Seville to Hernandez's manuscripts to nineteenth-century pharmacognosy, and the books actually printed in Mexico for use in Mexico fall out of the story. This object opens the 1607 sheets and quotes them: the title page that promises the herbs "diziendo el nombre de la rayz, o yerba en Mexicano, o en Otomi", the protomedico's licence, the approbation justifying publication by the absence of anyone to cure outside the capital, and a page of the remedy index in which the drugs are tzopilotl, ehcapahtli and quauhtlepahtli priced at two reales. It also puts the counterpoint on the same page - Galenic and astrological medicine, indigenous knowledge printed without a single indigenous name attached to it - and it dates the book against the 1615 volume that usually gets the credit, without turning the date into a claim of priority.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The title page of the copy read here reads "VERDADERA MEDICINA, CIRVGIA, Y ASTROLOGIA, EN TRES LIBROS DIVIDIDA, POR EL DOCTOR IHOAN DE BARRIOS NATVRAL De Colmenar Viejo", and the imprint at the foot is "Con Licencia y priuilegio ympreso en MEXICO. Por Fernando Balli. Año 1607." The author is therefore a Castilian, from Colmenar Viejo, publishing in Mexico City on a Mexican press.
The same title page states what the second book contains, and the statement is the reason this volume matters. It treats fevers, "Bubas, de Erisipela, y Viruelas, y de todas las yerbas que descubrio el Doctor Francisco Hernandez por mandado de su Magestad, en esta Nueua España, aplicadas a las enfermedades de el cuerpo humano, como despues lo hizo el Doctor Nardo Reco por mandado de su Magestad, diziendo el nombre de la rayz, o yerba en Mexicano, o en Otomi, &c. Y luego en Romance, para que es buena, y que cantidad se a de dar, y en que la an de tomar." The plants are to be named first in the indigenous languages and then in Spanish.
The book carries the licence of the medical establishment of the colony, not of a private patron. The first approbation is by "el Doctor Hieronymo de Herrera Protomedico en este Reyno Cathedratico jubilado, y Decano de la facultad de Medicina, en esta Real Vniuersidad", acting "por comission del Excelentisimo Señor Marques de Montes Claros, Virrey desta Nueua España". The second is by "el Doctor Ioan de Contreras Cathedratico de Prima de Medicina desta vniuersidad", dated "en Mexico, a veynte y vno de Enero de mill y seys cientos y seys". A third, by Doctor Alonso Muñoz, is dated 10 June 1606.
Contreras's approbation describes the herb treatise as a translation and gives the book's intended readership. It is "otro de la virtud, y naturaleza de todas las yeruas que ay en esta tierra aplicadas a todas las enfermedades del cuerpo humano, traduzido del que compuso el Doctor Francisco Hernandez. Por mandado de su Magestad", and the whole is judged "muy vtil para los Medicos, y Cirujanos, y principalmente para los lugares desta Nueua España, donde no ay quien cure". The justification offered for printing it is the absence of practitioners outside the capital.
The same purpose is stated on the title page in stronger terms. The first book is to show "como en sus casas pueden hazer los enfermos los jaraues: purgas. &c. sin que sea menester yr a las Boticas" - how the sick can make their own syrups and purges at home without having to go to the apothecary. A licensed book aimed at removing the apothecary from the transaction is unusual, and the volume says nothing about how widely it was read.
The claim about indigenous plant names is not an intention left unfulfilled. A page of the index of remedies, arranged by complaint, prescribes almost exclusively Mexican plants under Nahuatl names - under "Para que no se caygan los cauellos", the ash of the feathers of the tzopilotl; under "Para la caspa de la cabeça", the tequixquiquilitl steeped in wine or water; under "Para matar los piojos, y liendres", the decoction of the ohuapahtli, the cocoyatic, the ocopitl, the chichicpahtli, the chilpahtli, the tzicatzontli or "la yerua de Ioan infante: que se llama tlalamatl"; under "Para los que tienen lepra", the yohual xuchitl, the leaves of the ehcapahtli, the milk of the quauhtlepahtli.
The same page prices the doses in colonial currency, which is what makes it a usable book rather than a curiosity: remedies are given as "peso de dos reales" of a bark or a root, "peso de vn real de la rayz del tlacochichic", "peso de tres reales de los poluos del tlaltzilacayotli". Where a plant has a Spanish trade name the text supplies it - the nanahuaquahuitl is glossed "que es el Guayacan, o palo sancto" - so the indigenous name is the primary entry and the European one the gloss.
The clinical books are written as dialogue, with named interlocutors - FERRER, ROBLES - putting questions and "Doct." answering, which is a teaching form rather than a treatise form. In the chapter on decayed teeth the author breaks the form to report a failure of his own: of a remedy recommended for the stone he writes "yo lo e probado, y no me a salido verdadero". On the same page he reports what he saw in Madrid in 1586, a young foreigner on a table in the square pulling teeth with his fingers and throwing unknown powders at those he could not pull.
The third book is obstetric and paediatric, and it is addressed in part to women practitioners. The approbation summarises it as treating "la formacion de la criatura, y de las enfermedades de las mugeres preñadas, y paridas, y los que estan obligados a saber las comadres, para hazer bien sus officios. Y asi mesmo de las enfermedades de los niños", together with a treatise on excessive fatness and thinness and one on cosmetics. Its first chapter opens on "la Anotomia de la Madre".
The title page also records a piece of public-works advice: the second book treats "de que agua es la mejor, y el orden que yo di a su Excelencia el Marques de Montes Claros que es el modo como oy se trae a esta Ciudad" - the author claims to have advised the viceroy on the water supply of Mexico City and says the method then in use was his. The volume offers no corroboration for the claim, which is the author's own.
On chronology the book is worth placing carefully. The Mexican volume usually credited with putting Hernandez's survey into Spanish for ordinary readers is the Quatro libros de la naturaleza of 1615; this book was licensed in 1606 and printed in 1607, and its approbation describes one of its treatises as translated from Hernandez. That makes it the earlier Mexican printing of that material rather than a copy of the later one. It does not make it the same book, and this object asserts the dates rather than a priority.
What this volume is, and is not, needs saying in the same breath as the rest. Its therapeutics are Galenic and astrological - the first book argues about which days are elective for bleeding and purging - and nothing here is evidence that its remedies worked. The Nahuatl entries are knowledge taken from Mexican healers and markets and printed without naming any of them, under the authority of a Castilian doctor and a royal commission, and the transfer runs one way. The title also announces that the author writes "contra lo que a escrito el D. Hidalgo de Seuilla" and against some astrologers, so the book is a bid for professional standing as well as a manual.