This book highlights Indian materia medica gathered by the Spanish Jesuit missionary, José Gumilla (1686-1750), in the Orinoco Valley between 1715 and 1738. Gumilla—like his co-religionists of old, José de Acosta (1539-1616), Bernardino de Sahagún (1500-1590), and others—wrote a carefully prepared, detailed work, El Orinoco Ilustrado (1741), which embraced much more than Indian medicine and medicinal herbs, since it described native customs, languages, rites, and history. In spite of certain recognizable shortcomings, El Orinoco Ilustrado has gained a permanent place in history, because it was the first serious study of the Orinoco Valley natives.
Doctor Fortique chose the excellent 1963 edition of El Orinoco Ilustrado, published by the Venezuelan Academy of History, as a basic text. Gumilla went far beyond medicine in his insatiable interest in everything dealing with Indians. For example, he thought that the Indians were descendants of Cain, who had journeyed to the New World and had landed in Brazil. Like other chroniclers, Gumilla speculated on this theory of Indian origin, noting that among other things the Indians, like the Israelites, circumcised their young, disdained port, used aromatic oils, and washed frequently. Of the Indians’ eating habits, Gumilla observed that the natives of the region always consumed quantities of soil mixed with their food, with no apparent ill effects. Today we know that the soil consumed by the Indians was rich in iron oxide, aluminum silicate, and magnesium silicate, which are basic to the proper development and growth of the body. The herbs, roots, leaves, cuttings, seeds, and flowers, which were accurately identified by Gumilla, were used effectively by the Indians as astringents, laxatives, emetines, or douches. On reading this book, one is impressed not only by the many remedies that the Indians had in their therapeutic arsenal, but also by the painstaking efforts of this missionary to learn all about the natives and their ways.
Doctor Fortique’s work is valuable. His laudable attempt to furnish the interested reader with some medical information found in El Orinoco Ilustrado is successful. However, the reader must regret Doctor Fortique’s decision not to place his subject matter within an historical, literary, or medical context. Had he done so, the reader would better be able to appreciate, assess, or compare the value and importance of Gumilla’s medical information within the framework of colonial chroniclers who have written about the New World and the Indian.
