Baptism through Incision is the latest volume in the Latin American Originals series, a collection of primary source texts translated into English that has mostly focused on the early church and the spiritual conquest of Spanish America in the sixteenth century. The translation of Pedro José de Arrese's Physical, Canonical, Moral Principles [ . . . ] on the Baptism of Miscarried Fetuses and the Cesarean Operation on Women Who Die Pregnant brings the series into the eighteenth century to explore the intersection between faith and science. This medical treatise, published in Guatemala in 1786, is part of a genre of texts produced throughout the Spanish empire in which physicians and priests provided detailed instructions on the cesarean operation to make the procedure accessible to other clergymen, physicians, surgeons, barbers, midwives, and even laypeople. Not simply a surgical intervention, the cesarean operation was mainly meant to ensure the spiritual salvation...

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