History of Latin American Dermatology

E. SILVA-LIZAMA, P. H. URQUIZU, P. GREENBERG, S. DE LEÓNarmed themselves with padded cotton coats and bows, dressing up for war like fouryoung warriors. The arrows fired by these fighters penetrated Chucuybatzin’s matting;it was a dreadful revolution that was carried out by the Lords of yore.Iximché, the capital of the Cakchiquel kingdom, had a brief and tempestuoushistory. The Cakchiquel were allies of the Quiché; the court was in Chiavar andthe king was Quikab. But the Quiché king was toppled by his children and hehimself advised the Cakchiquel to flee and found Iximché at the top of MountRatzamut. The kings Juntoh and Vukubatzm built the city in 1470. From thattime onwards they were enemies of the Quiché, which was taken advantage ofby the conqueror Pedro de Alvarado who emulated the tactic employed byHernán Cortés in the conquest of Mexico.The first Spanish historians to reach Iximché were Bernal Díaz Del Castilloand Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmán. Bernal Díaz passed through Iximchéin August 1526, having to cut his path through the city weapon in hand, sinceGuatemalan squadrons hidden in the cliffside stood in ambush against theSpaniards. Bernal spent the night in what he called Old Guatemala and describedit thus: “and there were the chambers and so good and of such wealthy buildingsin sum as of chieftains who ruled over all the provinces of the region.” This descriptionconstitutes real praise because the soldier chronicler had been a witnessto the magnificence of the Aztec court 6 .The description made by Don Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmán in the Florida Remembrance,book XV, chapter V, is vivid and detailed. There is a passage which isworth transcribing:[…] toward the northern part of the palace, where in a very proper and adorned spotthere stood, in something like a hermitage or area for adoration, an oracle of the devilwhich was a stone, black and transparent like glass, but of better and more preciousa material than Chay stone, in whose diaphanous material they found the sentenceconfirmed; then he was executed there at that tribunal atop that pedestal where theaccused had also been tortured, and if on the contrary there was a representation orin the diaphanous material of the stone nothing was represented, he was set free. Andthis oracle was also consulted regarding all military movements that came up, warbeing waged or not according to the aspect or representation of the oracle.Figures:15. Tumor in side ofnose16. Tumor in eye17. Nasal deformityThis leads to the assumption that this oracle may also have been consultedif some ruler or chieftain suffered some illness or dermatosis which could notbe cured by the physicians or priests.Here it is worth while to carry out a brief analysis of the nameGuatemala 4 . The first historical documents in which the name Guatemala iswritten are the letters of report which Pedro de Alvarado sent to HernánCortés in 1524; Alvarado narrates his trip from Soconusco, and the wordGuatemala appears three times.In the second letter Alvarado says he left from Utatlán, the capital of theQuiché kingdom, and that after two days he arrived in Guatemala, in other words, Iximché.Hernán Cortés mentions the city of Guatemala in his letter of report to King CharlesV dated in Mexico on October 15, 1524.In the three letters mentioned, the name of Guatemala is written in the same way ascurrently and it is surely the Spanish rendering of the word Quauthtemalan, of Nahuatlorigin, which is the name the Mexican Indians gave to the Cakchiquel city.In some records of the city hall of Santiago there appears the word Guatemala,originally identifying the Cakchiquel city of Iximché, but as of July 27, 1525, it designated230