Practising Medicine in Early Colonial Lima, Peru

The Spanish crown anticipated that the medical practices in Spain would be replicated in the New World. While there were abundant opportunities to practice medicine in Peru, the opportunities to learn medicine were limited by the lack of universities capable of awarding medical degrees and by the shortage of books to guide students. Meanwhile, those practitioners who came from Spain found that the materia medica they had traditionally used was not always available. How did medical practitioners respond to these conditions? How did they acquire training and did they experiment with the diverse flora and minerals found in the Andes? This paper shows that despite the obstacles that medical practitioners faced they tried to adhere to humoral medical practices. This extended to training indigenous people and African slaves how to prepare medicines and let blood and to seek local substitutes for Old World medicines.