History of Latin American Dermatology

M. MADERO, F. MADERO, G. MONTENEGRO, M. COELLO, C. ARIASAccording to most historians, syphilis also existed in this area before the arrival of theSpaniards. Its external manifestations were referred to as buboe or warts, often observednot only among inhabitants of the area, but also among many persons “comingfrom elsewhere,” who came to this area looking for relief, since the region was consideredto be of “good temperament” for the healing of many diseases, both for its warmclimate and the fame of its herbal medicine, and especially because sarsaparilla grew onthe banks of the Guayas River — a plant to which major therapeutic results, even in thetreatment of syphilis, were attributed. Cieza de León says about this: “And many who hadtheir entrails damaged and their bodies rotten became healthy just by drinking waterfrom these roots [...] and others who were suffering from buboe and had them insidetheir bodies, also healed through drinking this water on suitable days. In sum, manywere swollen and others sore and went back home healed.”Skin parasites included chiggers — which caused ulcerations and which were later oneof the cruelest scourges for the Spaniards — as well as the body louse and the head louse.This native medical situation is known basically through the accounts of the firstSpaniards; the chroniclers of the Indies describe to us a medicine of the pre-conquest periodwith instinctive, demoniacal, magical and priestly characteristics; according toGonzález Suárez “all its healing system was reduced to baths, potions and rubs, the efficacyof which they had learned from experience.”The ConquestAs of the arrival of Bartolomé Ruiz — a skillful Spanish pilot and the first Europeanto step on Ecuadorian land, followed by the great conquistador Francisco Pizarro — theSpaniards found in these lands pathologies that were conditioned by the tropical environment.Perhaps the ailment they had to face most often was malaria. This disease was endemicamong the tribes of the Ecuadorian coast; the Spaniards suffered even worse fromthe consequences of mosquito bites infected by hematozoa, to the point that, accordingto chroniclers, these bites “took many of them to their graves and made most of them ill.”On his third trip along the southern coasts, Francisco Pizarro disembarked in San MateoBay in early 1531. From there, he went on to the Coaque and Puerto Viejo settlements, inpresent-day Manabí Province, where the Spaniards suffered one of the biggest and most unknownplagues, which they called “wart-plague.” This epidemic seems — according to studiescarried out in the twentieth century by some researchers — to be attributable toframbesia, although there are still some who think it could have been Peruvian wart.Another frequent disease at that time was smallpox. In relation to March 1531, MercedarianFriar Pedro Ruiz Naharro says: “In this Bay of Quaque some of our Spaniardsbecame sick with smallpox and buboe attacks, causing the death of some, while othersended with their faces full of holes and extremely ugly, an effect caused by smallpox.”Shortly after its foundation, the city of Guayaquil, the main Ecuadorian port, had ahospital where many sick people went from different points of the coast, attracted by thehealing fame enjoyed by fresh sarsaparilla. This hospital had a pharmacy containing allthe drugs used at the time; these included the “black soap” prepared — as taught by theSpaniards — with lye obtained from the ashes of certain woods and mixed with tallow;this product was of very popular use in baths and especially to wash the hair and helpin the control of lice.Colonial periodIn the early seventeenth century, the Huancavilca natives had almost died out, as aconsequence, to a great extent, of the carelessness the Spanish settlers with regard to188