John Slater, Maríaluz López-Terrada and José Pardo-Tomás (eds), Medical Cultures of the Early Modern Spanish Empire, Farnham, Burlington: Ashgate, 2014, pp. xiii + 309, £65. ISBN 978 1 472 28134.
From the moment the reader first sets eyes on the title and contents of this book, the attention is turned to the Spanish Empire as a plural entity. The plurals become essentials in the characterisation of the empire and are a recurring theme: the authors talk about spaces, contexts, itineraries, histories, discourses, differences, voices, institutions, actors, practitioners, interactions, dialogues, conflicts, negotiations and ‘intersections of medical cultures (p. 6). In order to understand such a complex reality, different analytic approaches, as well as sources traditionally not considered by historians of medicine, are taken into account. With a specific interdisciplinary aim, the authors embrace a broad range of documents and literary genres: transcripts of inquisitorial trials; questionnaires and scientific instructions; natural histories; correspondence; travel literature; literary anthropologies; novels and theatrical works. This documental variety produces a polyphonic history of knowledges and experiences. Spain and its large empire (New Spain, Canary Islands, and Italy) is viewed from multiple perspectives and represented by different voices, including those socially marginalized. It is no coincidence that the sources analysed
