title: [Topographical-medical study on the Virgin of Guadalupe's ayate. Unpublished paper from a New Spanish sage].
abstract: In the context of medical studies, the topographic aspect (a study about the special circumstances that contributes to the beginning, develop, and ending of diseases belonging to a country) acquired particular significance in New Spain through the work of Diego Cisneros (1618). Juan de Melgarejo, professor, protophysician, priest, and author of two medical writings, continued with the work of Cisneros. The one that concerns us in this paper is called Parecer que ejecutó el Dr. D. Juan de Melgarejo por mandato de su Santidad y orden del Proto Medicato sobre la incorrupción del Ayate de María Santísima de Guadalupe, por los años de 1666. This text remained unpublished and it is closely related to the line of Melgarejo's works on the Virgin of Guadalupe. In this work he analyzes the ayate (cloak) of Juan Diego from a topographic perspective inserted in theoretical and experimental aspects of the hippocratical-galenic slope that prevailed in the medicine perspective of the Baroque New Spain. This research includes aspects on the university education of the author and regarding his tasks as protophysician, one of which was, precisely, the development of the Guadalupean manuscript. All the sources we have used are original. They come from México's General Archive of the Nation, and they all were interpreted by the author. They show the training given by doctors at the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico and the link between this and the tasks of the Royal Protomedicato Tribunal.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Distrito Federal, México. rsala@sociales.unam.mx.
authors.forename: María Luisa
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Rodríguez-Sala
mesh_terms: D002410:Catholicism / Q000266:history*; D049670:History, 17th Century; D008800:Mexico; D019371:Topography, Medical / Q000266:history*
keywords: 17th Century History; History of medicine