History of Latin American Dermatology

E. SILVA-LIZAMA, P. H. URQUIZU, P. GREENBERG, S. DE LEÓNThe conquerors also suffered scabies, myasis, pediculosis and filariasis. In the FloridaRemembrance reference is made to these plagues and especially to nasal and cutaneousmyasis, as well as to oncocercosis, which might by caused by oncocerca valvulus var.Acutiens and a species of Filaria of Medina 3, 7 .■ Dermatology from from the Colony the Colony to this dayto this dayEduardo Silva-LizamaDermatology in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesDescriptions of skin diseases during this period are vary scarce, for which reason weshall mention some significant aspects of the history of medicine and their relationshipwith Dermatology.During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries medical science and culture developedunder the influence of therapeutic methods based on herbs, music, water, battles,symbolic spiritual rites and the care of the patient by the community. In Guatemala, skinailments were known, and proof of this was the interest shown by medical and governmentalofficials in the creation of hospitals, such as were built in the years 1527, 1543and 1776. In most of them, all kinds of diseases were treated; there was a smaller numberof asylums and hospices created to handle the epidemics which periodically affectedthe country, like the St. Lazarus Hospital founded by the Marquis of Lorenzana in 1638for the treatment of skin diseases and leprosy.All the historians of medicine and of culture in general have stated that for Spain thefifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries constituted a true scientific renaissanceand that in that period medicine and surgery reached their zenith only to fall markedlyin the eighteenth century, which was poor as regards the quality and the number of truescientists. This apogee and flourishing of Spanish medicine arrived in Guatemala verylate, because both in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries our city lacked an appropriateenvironment for this purpose since it was more concerned with the field of colonizationpolicy, full of asperities, and with the pacification and Christianizing of theGentiles. Medicine was practiced like a vulgar empiricism; there was no venue for teachingand hospitals were mere asylums for the ill, consoled more by religion than by healingscience. There was no awareness of Spain’s science, which began to be knowntoward the end of the seventeenth century.Spanish medical culture made inroads in Guatemala toward the eighteenth century,after a lengthy delay, when the Iberian Peninsula was already in decadence. The majorphysiological ideas, the progress in scientific surgery, the boom in anatomy, all of it datingfrom the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, arrived in Guatemala at the endof the eighteenth century.In the sixteenth century, the ill in body and spirit ambled about the city; there was nophysician and only priests and religion could cure, imploring the favors and mercies ofGod. Among those unending sufferings Friar Matías de Paz promenaded his white habit– an angel of hope and salvation, who ran from one end to the other carrying miraculousherbs and cordial potions. Brother Matías founded the hospital of St. Alejo or of the Indians(Figure 18). Bishop Francisco Marroquín was not only the founder of theGuatemalan church and school, he also founded the Royal Hospital of Santiago (Figures19-21) and thus represented Medicine, in what the latter has of mercy and of consolation.In the last decade of the sixteenth century Don Juan de los Reyes, one of our firstcertified surgeons, wielded his pen and using it like a knife or cautery, forced the easygoinggovernor to tread the paths of public health. Nothing is known of Don Juan’s232