Natural History, Dec 1999 v108 i10 p54

AZ-TECH MEDICINE. (manuscript details Aztec medicinal practice) ROB NICHOLSON.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1999 American Museum of Natural History

The History of Medicine in Mexico: The People's Demand for Better Health, an 860-square-foot fresco by the
great Diego Rivera, adorns a dim, quiet lobby in the Centro Medico La Raza, a complex of modern hospitals in
the heart of Mexico City. Doctors pass it without a glance, even though their heritage is spread before them in an
explosion of emotion, color, and form. On the left side of the painting, Rivera depicted the health-care technology
of the 1950s--transfusions, vaccinations, X rays, hospital births, and radiation therapy. To the right he showed the
practices of the Aztecs, Mexico City's pre-Columbian inhabitants. A worried noble points at his heart while a
stern curandero hands him an infusion from the bloom of yolloxochitl, a member of the magnolia family. A midwife
and her team bring forth an infant; other healers administer massage, herbal poultices, dental care, medicinal
steambaths, and enemas. Trepanation, a primitive cranial operation used by the Aztecs, is also illustrated, attesting
both to Rivera's scholarship and to the use of analgesics (could any patient have borne the excruciating pain
without them?).

At the center of the mural, faithfully copying an image from the early-sixteenth-century Codex Borbonicus, Rivera
painted the Aztec goddess Tlalzolteotl, who was connected with cleansing and fertility. Below her the artist paid
homage to another codex (manuscript book), the Badianus Manuscript, by reproducing the majority of its
illustrations. Created in 1552, this repository of traditional medicinal knowledge is the legacy of an Aztec artist
who labored at a Catholic mission that is now a mere two subway stops from the Centro Medico. Two other
compendiums of Aztecana that include medical lore survive from about the same period, one compiled by
historian and missionary Bernardino de Sahagun and the other by court physician Fernando Hernandez. These
two texts cover a greater number of plant species than the Badianus does, and in the case of Hernandez's work,
one could say that the ink drawings are more accurate botanically. But of the three, the Badianus is the oldest,
and its renderings are essentially the earliest surviving illustrations of New World plants. Having seen the amazing
floral wealth of Mexico on numerous collecting expeditions, I favor the Badianus Manuscript for the kick I get out
of recognizing species of plants I have come upon during fieldwork and for the visual joy I derive from the utterly
flamboyant colors--as bright as a Mexican cottage garden in full sun.

From 1519 through the 1520s, the Spanish conquistadores and the priests and administrators who followed them
did their best to tear down the Aztec monarchy and impose Christianity. In the process, much of Aztec
heritage--the accumulated wisdom as well as the artifacts and architecture--was lost or destroyed, including most
Aztec works on bark paper. Almost immediately, however, efforts got under way to salvage and record
traditional knowledge, including indigenous medications. In 1545, for example, Spanish physician Nicolas
Monardes published an (unillustrated) account of botanical cures, a version of which was also translated into
English under the title Ioyfull Newes out of the Newe Founde Worlde, Wherein Is Declared the Rare and
Singuler Vertues of Diuerse and Sundrie Hearbes, Trees, Oyles, Plantes, and Stones, with Their Applications, as
Well for Phisicke as Chirurgerie. Plants such as sassafras, tobacco, coca, and "holie woodde" were touted as
potent new remedies (the last refers to species of Guaiacum, or lignum vitae, used to treat venereal disease).

At what had been the great marketplace of Tenochtitian (the Aztec capital that became Mexico City), the
Franciscan order erected a church and convent known as Santiago de Tlaltelolco. There, in 1536, Viceroy
Antonio de Mendoza established the College of Santa Cruz, one of the first European-style schools of higher
learning for indigenous peoples in the New World. At Santa Cruz, sons of the Aztec nobility were taught to read
and write Spanish, Latin, and (using the Western alphabet) Nahuafl, their own language. Other courses were
arithmetic, philosophy, and music.

The school also enlisted renowned Aztec healers to teach their medicinal arts. One of these Indians, who was
given the Christian name Martinus de la Cruz, rose to the position of Physician of the College. It was he who
made the actual compilation of plant descriptions and medicinal uses that is now known as the Badianus
Manuscript, but the name that has become attached to it is that of his colleague Juannes Badianus, an Indian
instructor of Latin, who rendered the text in that language. No artist was given credit for the colorful illustrations.
Scholars theorize that de la Cruz himself painted and labeled each plate and wrote his descriptions in Nahuatl on
separate sheets of paper, and that Badianus then did his translations and added them to the illustrations.

The herbal, prepared at the request of the viceroy's son, Francisco de Mendoza, was intended as a gift to Charles
I, king of Spain. The first page begins, "A little book of Indian medicinal herbs composed by a certain Indian,
physician of the College of Santa Cruz, who has no theoretical learning, but is well taught by experience alone. In
the year of our Lord Saviour 1552." The medical manual crossed the sea safely, but there is no record that it ever
came into the king's hands. A number of librarian's marks were added inside the cover over the centuries, and the
words "Ex Libris Didaci Cortavila," scrawled on the frontispiece, indicate that it once belonged to that Spanish
apothecary. Eventually it reached Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597-1679), librarian of the Vatican and
cofounder of the renowned Barberini Library in Rome. In 1902 the Barberini Library was absorbed into the
Vatican's holdings, and a mere twenty-seven years later the manuscript was brought to light by American historian
Charles Clark. Knowledge of the Aztec healers finally reached the world at large in 1940, when a facsimile
edition of the Badianus appeared, translated into English and annotated by Emily Walcott Emmart. A reprint
edition, An Aztec Herbal: The Classic Codex of 1552, is to be issued shortly by Dover Press.

The book's thirteen chapters deal with close to hundred afflictions, beginning with those of the scalp and head and
working downward. Leprosy, heart pain, venereal diseases, and "tubercles of the breast" are considered along
with more mundane ailments such as "fetid breath," "odor of the armpits," and "rumbling of the abdomen." The
final chapter is ominously titled "Of Certain Signs of One Who Is Going to Die."

The medications are drawn from animal, vegetable, and mineral sources, many of which seem preposterous by
today's standards, such as calcareous kidney stones and the charred excrement of various birds and animals.
(Keep in mind, however, that Premarin, a currently popular estrogen-replacement medication, is derived from the
urine of pregnant mares.) The Badianus prescriptions commonly are for combinations of materials, mostly of
botanical origin, such as barks, flowers, roots, and woods. The potions pose a puzzle for modern
pharmacological researchers, who hope to tease out of each complex stew the one molecule that may be the main
active ingredient.

Many of the plants that have been identified are powerhouse producers of efficacious medicinal compounds.
Argemone grandiflora, a close relative of the painkilling opium poppy, was known to the Aztecs as chicalote, an
analgesic for reducing pain in the groin. Two plates depict Dioscorea (the genus to which true yams belong), some
species of which contain powerful steroidal sapogenins. In the 1940s one Mexican species brought a fortune to
chemists who discovered how to synthesize the human hormones progesterone (used in oral contraceptives) and
testosterone from chemicals held in the plant's tuberous root system.

Conspicuously absent from the volume are most of the hallucinogenic plants found in the other Aztec herbals, such
as the sacred cactus peyotl and the mushroom teonanacatl. Perhaps the friars overseeing the project considered it
unseemly to recommend these to the court of Spain. The self-deprecating tone of the introduction similarly
suggests caution: "Would that we Indians could make a book worthy in the King's sight, for this is certainly most
unworthy to come before the sight of such great majesty. But you will recollect that we poor unhappy Indians are
inferior to all mortals, and for that reason our poverty and insignificance implanted in us by nature merit your
indulgence."

The illustrations are for the most part simple and stylized, far from the photo-realist botanical renderings we've
become accustomed to. They don't compare in accuracy with the woodcuts in European herbals produced at
about the same time or with the botanical representations of such great Renaissance artists as Albrecht Durer.
Nevertheless, some plants are instantly recognizable. A favorite of mine is the depiction of huacalxochitl,
identifiable to any botanist as a member of the arum family, which includes jack-in-the-pulpit. The flower shows
all the classic features: a white columnar spadix surrounded by a hooded spathe, green outside and aflame with
red inside.

Other illustrations are more problematic. In one plate, we note a plant that belongs to the potato family. The
leaves have a jagged edge, the flowers are white trumpets, the fruits are large and fleshy. But the artist, like many
herbalists of the time, depicts the plant as a tree---on a questionable scale--with its flowers and fruit occurring
simultaneously. These liberties tantalize. Is the plant a thorn apple (Datura), correctly shown with upturned flowers
but incorrectly shown with smooth rather than thorny fruit? Or is it a freely drawn angel's-trumpet (Brugmansia), a
South American native that may well have been traded in pre-Columbian times? Other South American plants,
such as Theobroma cacao, the source of chocolate, were well established in Mexico prior to the Spanish
conquest. In addition, plants such as vanilla and Bourreria, native to coastal regions, and fir, native to the highest
mountains, are also portrayed--additional evidence that botanical goods were collected and transported
throughout the Aztec realm.

The identities of many plants in the Badianus Manuscript have yet to be deciphered, and nonochton is one of
them. Offered for relief of pain or heat in the heart, it is part of a prescription whose ingredients also include gold,
amber, turquoise, red coral, ocher, and the burned heart of a stag. Its name means "little nopals that come out of
anthills," and the painting also shows red ants working among the tuberous roots--suggesting a plant--insect
symbiosis or at least a shared preference for a particular soil. Despite the description, it does not resemble nopal,
or Nopalea cactus. Portulaca, a succulent Mexican annual, has been suggested as a possibility; my own guess
might be Pereskiopsis, a tree in the cactus family that has succulent oval leaves on thorny stems.

According to Spanish priest and historian Juan de Torquemada (1557?-1664), who drew on earlier accounts of
the conquest, "Montezuma kept a garden of medicinal herbs, and the court physicians experimented with them
and attended the nobility." The large aristocracy and extensive botanical gardens, a legacy of the Aztecs' own
expansionism, helped contribute to one of the most detailed and profusely illustrated chapters of the Badianus
Manuscript: "Trees and Flowers for the Fatigue of Those Administering the Government and Holding Public
Office." The text promises that "indeed, these medicaments bestow the bodily strength of a gladiator, drive
weariness far away, and finally, drive out fear and fortify the human heart." Whether the Badianus Manuscript was
ever found "worthy in the King's sight" we shall probably never know, but perhaps modern government officials
will be moved to bestow more funding on botanical gardens that promise to research the plants discussed in this
chapter.

A sort of botanical time capsule, this little book transports us back into the realm of Aztec knowledge and yet is
also rich enough to inspire physicians, pharmacists, artists, and botanists into the new millennium. And the
Badianus Manuscript is a worthy legacy for all who seek to heal, a common thread wherever humans toil.

Rob Nicholson ("Az-Tech Medicine") first learned of the 1552 Badianus Manuscript and its colorful illustrations
while taking a course with renowned Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Schultes. Currently interim administrative
director of the Botanic Garden of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, Nicholson has been part of a
team studying photoecdysones in primitive gymnosperms (these compounds help deter insects from feeding on the
plants). In addition, he is writing on botanical aspects of the paintings of Frederic Church, a member of the
nineteenth-century Hudson River school, who also spent time in Colombia and Ecuador. Nicholson's
plant-collecting expeditions have taken him around the world in search of specimens for use in medical research,
conservation biology, and ornamental horticulture. He has traveled to Mexico, Canada, Chile, Vietnam,
Colombia, Ecuador, Morocco, Algeria, the Philippines, and South Korea, as well as around the United States.
Not a bad life, says he.