Recipes Project - Recipes for Curing Syphilis from Colonial Mexico
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By Heather R. Peterson, Assistant Professor of History University of South Carolina, Aiken Syphilitic man attributed to Albrecht Dürer (1496) Credit Wiki Commons
While there is debate about the origins of syphilis, most Spanish doctors in the sixteenth century followed the physician Nicolas de Monardes in believing it to be of New World origin. Because the disease had appeared and spread so suddenly, Albrecht Dürer
and others supposed that the new disease was caused by an astrological
conjunction. But Monardes pinpointed the moment of European transmission
to Columbus’s return voyage. He supposed that there must have been
sexual concourse between the Indians Columbus brought back and all of
the armies of Europe who were assembled in Naples; they then spread the
disease throughout Europe.[1]
Confronted with curing this new disease, Spanish doctors looked to
New World medicinal herbs arguing that where God had planted the seed of
contagion, he would also plant the remedy. Eager to understand the new
pharmacopeia the Crown sent doctors, such as Francisco Hernandez, and
included questions regarding local herbs and cures in the Relaciones geographicas, an ambitious survey of the lands and peoples in the Spanish realms (1580). While the reports identified a number of local cures for syphilis, such as chupirini, which apparently caused the genitals to go on fire, or the herbs administered by female doctors in Oaxaca chinanteca and matlacaptl, only mechoacán, a powerful emetic became a staple part of the Spanish pharmacopeia.[2] An
alchemist’s flask decorated with a three-headed eagle representing
mercury sublimated three times. Splendor solis, attributed to Salomon
Trismosin (1532). Credit: Wellcome Library, London
Many young doctors also made the voyage, hoping to capitalize on
first hand experience of native cures. In his 1567 treatise, Pedro Arias
de Benavides touted the New World origins of his cure for syphilis,
which he claimed to have practiced and “perfected” during an eight-year
stay in New Spain. The secret to Arias’s cure was mercury, the
alchemists’ prima materia, which he argued opened the channels
of the body to receive the herbs and oils. Arias had first witnessed a
mercury cure in Salamanca, but claims that his cure was an improvement
over the first, which left the cleric “cured” but missing four teeth.
Though he claimed it was a New World cure, Arias’ recipe involved items
such as theriac (which contained opiates from the Near East), pork fat,
and three unguents, two of which refer to regions or places in Spain
“aragon” and “dealtea” (de Altea contained fenugreek, a root from India
that was probably introduced to Spain under the Moors) suggesting the
transfer of pharmaceuticals went both directions. [3] What follows is a transcription of Arias’s recipe.
Doctor Pedro Arias de Benavides’s cure for Morbo Galico (1567)
Mix three quarts of mercury, weighing a mark, with
theriac and beat it in the mortar until it is “dead,” which you will
know because it does not return to mix although you throw a drop of oil
in the mortar, and thus being well mortified, take the mixture from
there, and beat six ounces of pork fat without salt, very ground up, and
cleaned of all the little veins and nerves that it has, and this being
well ground, return to incorporate it with the theriac and the mercury,
and leave it there for fifteen minutes.
I have for certain that the theriac quits the harm of the mercury,
for the following, because the teeth stay very firm and whiter than
before (!) and [patients] are able to chew after the cure, because it
does not impede the teeth, because this cure expels [the humors] through
the stool and urine. This being so copious that there are men who will
urinate thirty or forty times in a day, and it stinks so much that there
is not a person who does not suffer from the stench of the urine.
Then in two days I give them one ounce of the unguent “macieton” and
another ounce of “aragon” and another of “dialtea.” Later I would
incorporate all of these unguents, and let them sit for two days, and
after this time, I threw in four ounces of ash of vine shoot and another
half of mastic, and another half of incense, and one clove, and another
cinnamon, all well sifted, and oil of berry and of chamomile, of each
one ounce, and three of oil of brick. And if you want to fortify this
unguent for the more robust, throw in a half-dram of “euforbio” but if
it is during a hot season I do not throw in any. This unguent has the
property that it may go bad later, because all the things that are in it
are good and noble and are incorporated, they make a good operation, as
will be seen by whomever experiments with it.
Arias did not think that the mercury was a medicine in itself, but
that it opened the channels of the body for the real medicine: the
mixture of herbs. He argued that bubos was caused by an
abundance of melancholy in the body, and noted that though it was
normally spread by concourse with “unclean women” it could also arise
from a corruption of the humors in the body, as must have been the case
for the first person to have the illness. This sort of bubos,
he claims to have seen among “very honored clerics, who could not be
doubted,” and he sought to restore their honor from suspicion. [1] Nicolás Monardes, Primera
y Segunda y Tercera Partes de la Historia Medicinal de las Cosas que se
traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que sirven en Medicina (Sevilla: Alonso de Escrivano, 1574), 13-13v. [2] Anonimo, Relaciones Geográficas de la Díocesis de Michoacán Papeles de Nueva España (Guadalajara 1958), 12, 57. Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, ed. Relaciones Gegráficas de la Diócesis de Oaxaca vol.
Tomo IV, Papeles de Nueva España (Madrid La Real Casa: Paseo de San
Vicente núm 20, 1905), Atlatlauca y Malinaltepec, Item 17, pp. 172-73. [3] For a recipe for unguent of de Altea see: http://www.henriettes-herb.com/eclectic/journals/ajp1885/11-mex-prep.html For the recipe for theriace see the list of ingredients for the Amsterdammer Apotheek (1683) on: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theriac [4] See the list of ingredients for the Amsterdammer Apotheek (1683) on: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theriac
