Problemas y secretos maravillosos de las Indias (Mexico, 1591)
A physician's book of questions about America, printed at Mexico in 1591 and written before its author was thirty. It asks why the Indies shake, why quicksilver is lost in the silver works, what chocolate and tobacco do to the body, and whether people born in the Indies differ from people born in Europe — answering the ancient doctrine that the torrid zone was uninhabitable with an argument from altitude, rainfall and snow.
Why this wins its question: Cárdenas is usually mentioned, if at all, as an early writer on chocolate or as a curiosity in the history of creole self-description. What the 1591 book actually asks is almost never set out. This object prints the three-book plan from the volume's own summary, the questions of the third book verbatim — including the flattering one about American-born Spaniards and the racial one about Indians, side by side — the author's conclusion that the torrid zone is habitable and why, his vapour theory of earthquakes, and, in the same weight of type, the astrological account of gold that shows the limits of the method. It also sets Icazbalceta's dating of the author against Beristáin's and says which is which, rather than choosing silently.
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 book stands as entry 101, under the year 1591, of Joaquín García Icazbalceta's catalogue of Mexican imprints, which transcribes the title page: "Primera Parte de los Problemas y Secretos Maravillosos de las Indias. Compuesta por el Dr. Juan de Cárdenas, Médico. Dirigida al Ilustrísimo Señor D. Luis de Velasco, Virrey de esta Nueva España", with a coat of arms, and "Con licencia. En México. En casa de Pedro Ocharte. Año de 1591". It is a small octavo in roman type, of 8 unnumbered preliminary leaves and 246 numbered ones.
The book's own summary of contents, quoted by Icazbalceta, divides it in three. The first book treats "del sitio, temple y constelación desta tierra, dando la razón y causa de extrañas propiedades, que en ella succeden, como es temblar, haber tantos volcanes, tantas fuentes de agua caliente, llover en verano y no en invierno, darse á cada breve espacio de tierra una parte de tierra fría y otra de muy caliente".
The second book is metallurgical and botanical at once. It treats "copiosamente del beneficio de los metales, dando la razón por qué se echa sal en los montones de metal para sacar la plata, y por qué se pierde tanto azogue cuanto se saca de plata", and why some ores yield their assay sooner than others; and then "de algunas plantas de las Indias, como es del Cacao, del Maíz, del Chile, de las Tunas y del Tabaco", declaring in particular the properties of chocolate, of atole and of the smoke of piciete. The questions of the first book turn on the amalgamation works then running in New Spain.
The third book is about bodies, and its questions must be quoted rather than summarised. It treats "de las propiedades y cualidades de los hombres y animales nacidos en las Indias, como es decir que por qué los españoles que en esta tierra nacen son á una mano de vivo y delicado ingenio; y si es verdad que viven menos que los nacidos en la Europa, y por qué encanecen tan presto; por qué hay tantos enfermos del estómago; por qué á las mujeres les acude su regla con grandísimos dolores; por qué á los indios no les nace barba; por qué no hay éticos en las Indias; por qué no rabian en ella los animales". The praise of the American-born Spaniard and a racial generalisation about Indians stand in the same list, and both belong on the record.
Against the inherited doctrine that the torrid zone could not be lived in, the author resolves for habitability by physical geography. Icazbalceta quotes his conclusion: "Ansí que concluimos diciendo, que las Indias son habitables en todo tiempo por corregirles el calor las lluvias, las sierras nevadas, la igualdad de los días y noches, y sobre todo el altura de los lugares, mediante la cual gozan perpetuamente de aires que las refrescan y bañan."
His explanation of earthquakes is mechanical. The vapours raised by the sun from the humidity of the centre cannot get out, "por cuanto con mucha facilidad se cierran y aprietan los poros de la tierra, por donde habían de salir", and so, seeking a vent, they make the earth tremble. Icazbalceta's comment is measured: by this solution "se ve á lo menos que el Dr. Cárdenas conocía la inmensa fuerza de expansión del agua vaporizada".
The same book explains gold placers by planetary sympathy, and the passage is the measure of what the enquiry could not do. Gold received from the sun "su resplandor, hermosura, excelencia y señorío sobre todos los metales"; grains of it, drawn by the rays of a friendly planet, climb through the earth "en forma de granos, hasta llegar á la superficie de la tierra", and would rise to embrace the sun itself "si hubiera cuerpo firme en quien estribar". The book asks empirical questions and answers a great many of them from astrology.
The bibliographer's own verdict is neither dismissal nor celebration. The Problemas, he writes, "no tiene hoy utilidad práctica", and yet it makes known "lo mucho que el autor había observado y estudiado en edad todavía temprana" and is "curioso y útil para saber cómo se explicaban entonces muchos fenómenos naturales de las Indias"; and elsewhere that the book "no es propiamente un tratado de Medicina, sino una recopilación de Cuestiones Naturales".
The author is known chiefly from his own pages. He declares himself a native of Constantina, "recreación de Sevilla, jardín de España", and says of New Spain that he may now rightly call it his own, having come to it alone and forsaken in his tender years, and naming his master Antonio Rubio. At folio 80 he writes: "Yo compuse este libro siendo de edad de veintiseis años, y por mi poco posible y muchos trabajos, no lo pude imprimir hasta los veintiocho: destos la mitad viví en Castilla y la mitad en Indias." From this Icazbalceta computes his birth in 1563 and his voyage in 1577.
That biography is contested by the earlier bibliographer. Beristáin's entry makes Cárdenas a native of old Spain who passed to New Spain "por el año 1570" and was "Doctor y Catedrático de Vísperas de Medicina en la Universidad de Mégico", and it credits him with two further works — a treatise on chocolate, "Del Chocolate: que provechos haga, y si es saludable", printed at Mexico in 1609, and a promised "De los Secretos del Reyno del Perú" — while noting that Nicolás Antonio speaks of the author but omits his employments and residence in Mexico. The 1570 date and the professorship are not confirmed by Icazbalceta's reckoning from the book itself, which yields 1577; the disagreement is left standing here because no third witness was reachable.
Both witnesses agree on the imprint, which is the fact this object rests on: Beristáin lists "Problemas y secretos de las Indias. Imp. en Mégico por Ocharte 1591. 8.", and Icazbalceta gives the same printer, place, year and format from the title page of a copy.
The book was already all but unobtainable in the nineteenth century. Icazbalceta explains that he prints the whole index of its chapters, contrary to the scale of his catalogue, "en atención á lo muy raro del libro (no he visto más que un ejemplar de él)"; the copy he describes belonged to José M. de Ágreda. What can be said about the contents of the 1591 edition comes, for most readers, through that one copy.