Article suitable for older students

Aztec doctors

14th May 2025

Diego Rivera mural on the History of Medicine in Mexico

The great Mexican historian Alfredo López Austin, in his classic work Textos de Medicina Nahuatl (1984), wrote a nuanced appraisal of Aztec/Nahua/Mexica doctors. We’ve adapted and translated the piece from Spanish... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

Despite the fact that the boundaries between magic, religion and scientific empiricism were not clearly defined when it comes to healing procedures, it seems that a high degree of specialisation existed in pre-invasion Mexico. Texts referring to life before the arrival of Spaniards, as well as manuscripts chronicling life in the 17th century, mention grades of doctor, each bearing the name of a specific medical procedure. In particular we find the tetonalmacani, tetonaltiqui or tetonallaliqui, charged with ensuring that patients - especially children - should recover their tonalli-soul which they had lost. The teapatiani or ‘skull curer’ would put pressure on the roof of the child’s mouth in order to re-set the fontanelle.

We read too of those who painted figures on the body of the patient in order to induce bleeding or to cure dysentery; who extracted by suction illnesses which turned magically into paper, flint, stones or other physical objects; who treated bone fractures; who cured scorpion bites; who used their hot feet to put pressure on painful parts of the patient’s body.
Those who enjoyed a particularly high reputation were specialists in herbal medicine and in assisting childbirth. Midwives provided a wide range of services, from reassuring and caring for the newly pregnant to delivering the newborn and offering him/her to the gods, and celebrating with the family the first rituals of life.

Specialisation must have widened the gap in social standing of different doctors, ranging from the herbalist held in high esteem to the shunned tetlaxiliqui, who secretly performed abortions; from the experienced healer armed with a portfolio of tried-and-tested incantations to the mystic instructed by lightning to dedicate their entire life to the medicine of Tlaloc; from midwives who performed dances in major religious celebrations to those who humbly exposed their callus-covered feet to the heat of a fire before treading on the tired muscles of overworked citizens.

Eminent British historian Warwick Bray adds:-
’Not all Aztec medicine depended on prayers and magical formulae. The virtues of the steam bath were recognised for curing stiffness, inducing labour in pregnant women, seating out coughs and chills, and even (after drinking an infusion of herbs) for clearing a blotchy complexion. Doctors seem to have realised that external ailments like pustules and swollen faces could be due to internal disturbances, and the treatment included purging as well as dressing with powdered herbs... Aztec healers had discovered the therapeutic properties of about 1,200 plants, some of which are still unidentified, while others... have been tested scientifically and shown to possess the qualities which the Mexicans attributed to them.’

Sources:-
• López Austin, Alfredo (1984) Textos de Medicina Nahuatl, UNAM, Mexico City, pp. 37-38
• Bray, Warwick (1987) Everyday Life of the Aztecs, Dorset Press, New York, p. 184.

Picture sources:-
• Main: photo - of mural by Diego Rivera ‘Historia de la medicina en México’ - by Eugenio Zetina Calan, downloaded from https://www.local.mx/cultura/muralismo-diego-rivera-la-raza/
• Pix 1, 2 & 3: images from the Florentine Codex (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994
• Pic 4: illustration by Gerolamo Fumagalli, scanned from Imágen de México by Electra L. Mompradé & Tonatiuh Gutiérrez, SALVAT, Mexico City, 1976.

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