The Black Doctors of Colonial Lima: Science, Race, and Writing in Colonial and Early Republican Peru

At the turn of the eighteenth century, observers in Lima noted the domination of the medical profession by persons of African descent. Yet Afro-Peruvian medical practitioners are generally overlooked in narratives of the history of medicine in Peru, which have been constructed around the contributions and lives of a few notable creole doctors and scientists. Focusing on the period between 1760 and 1840, José R. Jouve Martín aims to rectify this oversight by singling out three pardo doctors who left behind a significant body of scientific writings and were intimately involved in the scientific community in Lima. These are the physician José Manuel Valdés, who rose to become protomédico general of Peru; José Manuel Dávalos, who played a senior role in the smallpox vaccination campaigns of the late eighteenth century; and the prominent and controversial surgeon José Pastor de Larrinaga, who was a staunch defender of the intellectual and practical...