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Basic Aztec facts: AZTEC HEALTH AND MEDICINE

15th Dec 2019

Aztec herbal medicine, Florentine Codex

In many ways Aztec (Mexica) health and medicine were far in advance of their time, much closer to nature and better than anything the Spanish could offer. They lived clean, simple, healthy lives, followed a good general diet, exercised well, and treated illnesses and injuries with a wide range of natural products - plus a bit of magic thrown in...! (Written by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

One Franciscan missionary from Spain wrote: ‘They have their own native skilled doctors who know how to use many herbs and medicines which suffice [work well] for them. Some of them have so much experience that they were able to heal Spaniards, who had long suffered from chronic and serious diseases.’

Because the Aztecs were a warrior people, they knew a thing or two about treating wounds. Standard practice: 1) wash the wound with warm, fresh pee; 2) treat with a herb to stop the bleeding; and 3) dress the wound with hot sap from Agave (cactus) leaves, with or without added salt.

Aztec surgeons certainly knew their onions too. To treat a broken leg, for instance, where the break had failed to heal, they inserted a wooden nail along the bone, covering the whole area with a medicinal plant plaster followed by a bandage. We didn’t use this technique in the West until the 20th century!

You name it, the Aztecs would have a cure or treatment for it. They created the world’s first ’botanical gardens’, where they grew around 3,000 medicinal herbs. The one shown here (pic 4) was a good remedy for a nose bleed...

Today we take clean water for granted. Around the world it was rare in those days, but the Aztecs actually built dual-carriageway aqueducts to bring fresh water right into their island capital city from a natural spring on the hills outside.

The Aztecs were CLEAN! They washed every day, and each Aztec house had a steam bath room attached. Aztec women took a steam bath immediately after they had given birth. The baby was bathed immediately after being born as well, a practice that continued for the rest of their lives...

The Mexica had their own anaesthetics, they were skilled at dentistry, they harvested superfoods like spirulina, they had a large work force of town sweepers who were paid to sweep Tenochtitlan, their capital, clean every day, they had public toilets, they kept grain stores as reserves. But one thing they couldn’t do much about was famine, drought, plague, storms, and other natural disasters...

In short, the Mexica lived healthy lives based on a high fibre, low cholesterol, and very varied diet. But remember we mentioned magic at the beginning?! Look again at picture 1: both doctor and patient are chanting, calling on spirits (in this case, after the man was bitten by a poisonous snake) to help cure the infection. Just as supernatural spirits could CAUSE illness, they could also help CURE them...

Guess...

...which Aztec herbal medicine recipe was a success in Europe for 200 years?

Find out

Visit our main ‘Aztec Health’ section...The Aztecs had healthy teeth!‘Did the Aztecs invent the sauna?’‘The World’s Healthiest Superfood’

Comments (2)

19th Dec 2024

Do you have any information on Ticitls?

Mexicolore

ticitl is the Nahuatl word for physician, in simple terms. (S)he was a man or woman skilled in healing who combined the functions of a doctor with what we might term ‘faith healer’. Diagnosis was generally made by divination rather than direct observation of symptoms. If you want a good, detailed description of Aztec medicinal methods and treatments, read pages 191-198 of the classic book ‘Daily Life of the Aztecs’ by Jacques Soustelle (1961).

Helge fredriksen

24th Mar 2022

The picture used on top of this page, I want to use it in my phd. How can I cite this picture?

Mexicolore

The image is from the Florentine Codex, Book XI, and depicts the use of traditional herbal medicine by the Mexica. It was scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994 of the Codex (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence). If you need further details, let us know.

Aztec herbal medicine, Florentine Codex