[Surgical practice in the Mexican Empire].
The prehispanic medicines of Mexico are considered as testimony of the splendor of the Meso-American cultures; their great scientific advance and technical allowed them to accumulate a vast collection of clinical and pathological data based on the observation and experimentation. They integrated a nomenclature medical surgical that reflected their advance in those fields of the knowledge, where the anatomy and surgery occupied a preponderant paper. The medicine was known generically as ticiotl, of where it derives the term tícitl for the doctor. In their concept health-illness the limits among the magic, religion and the empiricism for natural causes were not clear, therefore they considered that the divine, human or natural origin of the illnesses influenced in an important way in its nature. Inside this complex causal system, the illnesses caused by the gods, spirits and celestial beings were considered as hot, while those caused by beings of the other realm were cold. The practice of the medicine had a very established organization designing a very advanced system of specialties that allowed them to accumulate a vast experience for the handling of chronic and acute illnesses in different progression phases, which managed with an integral therapy that had a plurality of resources of vegetable origin, animal, and mineral. The surgery was designated as texoxotlaliztli and its cures tepatiliztli. The surgeon was designated as texoxotlaticitl and it developed advanced techniques in the handling of sutures, wounded, drainage of abscesses, fractures and joint dislocations, pterygium, tonsillitis, circumcision, and amputations.
Romero y Huesca
Andrés
A
Departamento de Cirugía, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mdxico. andreshuesca@yahoo.com.mx
Pérez-Chávez
Francisco
F
Anota-Rivera
Maria
M
Ortega-Alvarez
Adriana
A
Avilés-Tabares
Jonathan
J
Espinoza-Cerón
Karina
K
Bautista-Vera
Ernesto
E
Moreno-Aguilera
Eduardo
E
Ponce-Landín
Francisco Javier
FJ
Lavín-Lozano
Arturo Javier
AJ
Ramírez-Bollas
Julio
J
D005260:Female; D013502:General Surgery / Q000266:history*; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D007198:Indians, North American / Q000266:history; D008273:Magic / Q000266:history; D008297:Male; D008519:Medicine, Traditional / Q000266:history*; D008800:Mexico; D008517:Phytotherapy / Q000266:history; D012068:Religion and Medicine; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000266:history / Q000601:surgery / Q000628:therapy