Alonso López de Hinojosos, Suma y recopilación de cirugía (Mexico, 1578)
A surgical manual printed at Mexico City by Antonio Ricardo in 1578, written by the surgeon and nurse of the hospital for Indians of that city — a man with no medical degree, who signed himself by his hospital post. Its author had spent fourteen years at the Hospital Real de indios and had opened bodies there with the protomédico Francisco Hernández during the epidemic of 1576, looking for the cause of a disease that was emptying New Spain.
Why this wins its question: What circulates about this book is a bibliographic label — first surgical treatise printed in the New World — with nothing behind it. The catalogue entry has the substance: a title page on which the author claims no degree but the hospital ward, three approbations in which university doctors of Mexico record that they read and corrected the work of a maestre, a table of contents that starts with anatomy and ends with pestilence, a colophon of 26 May 1578, and the fact that the author had spent fourteen years at the hospital for Indians and had opened bodies there with Francisco Hernández during the cocolixtli of 1576. The achievement and its price are the same sentence: the anatomy came from an epidemic that was killing the people the hospital existed to treat. The object also states what the source does not know — that Icazbalceta never saw the 1578 edition, and described it only after a copy reached him in 1885.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
García Icazbalceta's catalogue enters the book at 1578 as number 81, "Lopez de Hinojoso (Herm. Alonso). Suma y Recopilación de Cirujía. México, Antonio Ricardo, 1578. En 8º", and states plainly of that entry: "No he visto esta primera edición, citada por Beristain." The full description exists only because a complete copy was communicated to him in May 1885 by José María de Ágreda, and it is printed among the corrections at the end of the volume.
The title page as there transcribed reads "SVMMA, || Y RECOPILACION || DE CHIRVGIA, CON VN || Arte para sãgrar muy vtil y prouechofa. || COMPVESTA POR MAES-||tro Alonfo Lopez, natural de los Inojofos. || Chirujano y enfermero del Ofpital de || S. Iofeph de los Yndios, defta muy || infigne Ciudad de Mexico", dedicated to the archbishop of Mexico Don Pedro Moya de Contreras, with a small engraving of Saints Cosmas and Damian, physicians — one holding a book or little box, the other an enormous flask — and the imprint "EN MEXICO, || Por Antonio Ricarco (sic) 1578."
The author names himself on his own title page by his hospital post and not by a degree: maestre Alonso López, native of los Hinojosos, surgeon and nurse of the hospital of San José de los Indios of Mexico City. The word enfermero — the man who nursed the patients — stands in the same line as cirujano.
Fourteen preliminary leaves carry the licence and privilege of the viceroy Don Martín Enríquez of 14 February 1578 and the archbishop's of the 7th of the same month, and three approbations. Fray Agustín Farfán says that "por estar justamente ocupado" Dr. Bravo had seen and amended the book with much deliberation and approved it, adding that he had himself seen it very particularly and amended some things; Dr. Francisco Bravo's approbation was given before a notary, as was that of Dr. de la Fuente, who states "ha muchos años que he visto curar y experimentar á maestre Alonso en su arte de Chirugía en España y en esta ciudad."
The text runs to folio 201 and the catalogue prints its own table of contents: a proem defining surgery, the liberal arts, what virtue is and the surgeon's intentions; a first tract on the definition of anatomy and of all the simple and compound members, in sixteen chapters; a second on bleeding or phlebotomy in seven; a third on apostemas in twenty-seven; a fourth on fresh wounds in thirteen; a fifth on the mal de bubas in four; a sixth on fractures and dislocations in twelve; and a seventh on pestilence in four paragraphs.
The colophon dates the printing exactly: "FVE impreffo el prefẽte Libro llamado Sũma y Recopilaciõ dĕ Chirugia, ẽ Mexico a beynte y feis dias dĕl mes de mayo, ẽ cafa dĕ Antonio Ricardo a la Cõpañ. de IESVS dĕ 1578", followed by "Gracias a Dios".
The author was born about 1535, a native of los Hinojosos in the bishopric of Cuenca; his name appears to have been simply Alonso López, the Hinojosos an addition denoting where he came from. While still a layman he practised medicine and surgery in Mexico, having been for fourteen years physician of the Hospital Real de indios.
At that hospital, the catalogue records, he applied himself much, in company with the protomédico Francisco Hernández, to the inspection of cadavers, in order to find the origin and the remedy of the disease of the cocolixtli that laid New Spain waste in 1576. The anatomical knowledge in the first tract and the post-mortem opening of bodies in Mexico City therefore come out of the same epidemic — one that fell on the indigenous population, and whose dead supplied the bodies.
After publishing the first edition, and already advanced in years, he asked to enter the Society of Jesus. Difficulties were raised at first on account of a certain illness he suffered; he was received at last on 15 January 1585 as coadjutor temporal and assigned as porter of the Colegio Máximo, where he died on 16 January 1597.
A second edition followed in 1595, and the two are not the same book. On Beristáin's description the Suma is divided into ten books or titles and more than two hundred chapters, the eighth treating of tabardillo, cocolixtli, liver disease, dysentery and flux of blood, the ninth of childbirth and the tenth of the diseases of children — a structure quite unlike the seven tracts of 1578. Icazbalceta reports that division on Beristáin's authority rather than from a copy, and it is repeated here on the same footing.
The man was nearly lost in the bibliography that recorded him: Nicolás Antonio made two different authors of him, calling one Alonso López, jesuita, and the other Alonso López de Hinojoso, and Icazbalceta notes the duplication in a footnote while sending the reader on to Eguiara and Beristáin.