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Beyond the Columbian Exchange: Medicine and public health in colonial Latin America
Author(s) -
Ramos Christina
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
history compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.121
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 1478-0542
DOI - 10.1111/hic3.12682
Subject(s) - historiography , colonialism , scholarship , latin americans , history of medicine , field (mathematics) , history , public health , public history , political science , anthropology , medicine , classics , economic history , sociology , archaeology , law , nursing , mathematics , pure mathematics
This essay charts a budding history and historiography on medicine and public health in colonial Latin America. It emphasizes the English‐language scholarship, presenting an overview of the field's emerging key themes pitted against its origins in bio‐historical accounts of the Columbian Exchange and its consequences for native survival. While the field remains disjointed with significant gaps in our knowledge, this essay positions the emerging historiography as central to larger conversations taking place within the fields of early modern medicine and science, Atlantic history, and colonial medicine in the 19 th and 20 th centuries.