This volume is a welcome addition to the rapidly expanding historiography of science and medicine in Latin America. Marcos Cueto has brought together a well-selected group of Latin American and U.S. scholars who examine a fruitful range of subjects from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries.
A stimulating essay by Suzanne Austin Archon stresses the ways in which the communal nature of indigenous medicine formed part of the communal defense against European pressures in colonial Ecuador. This essay is complemented by one written by Eduardo Estrella, who investigates the relationship between “Enlightenment science” and popular knowledge of quinine in the eighteenth century, and who underscores the diffusion of the benefits of quinine by the indigenous population. Kendall W. Brown looks into the export of mining technology to Huancavelica during the later Bourbon period; and Jorge Cañizares, influenced by the writings of Peter Gay on the European Enlightenment, examines the “utopia” of the Peruvian physician and politician, Hipólito Umanué, who envisaged the mobilization of Peruvian resources to construct a modern state. Here one high priority was the formation of a medical profession that would displace empirics and reduce the high death rate.
For this reader the most stimulating contribution is Leoncio López-Ocón Cabrera’s essay on nationalism and the origins of the Sociedad Geográfica de Lima, which explores the ways in which early geographers saw their discipline as a developmentalist instrument in the demarcation of national territory and the effective exploitation of natural resources. López-Ocón also contributes to debates about how far geography evolved as a tool of “imperialism” and how far as an independent, critical discipline. His essay valuably complements work done in Andean countries beyond the scope of this volume, in particular that of Efraín Sánchez on the Codazzi missions and the mapping of Colombia, which will soon be published in Bogotá. Manuel E. Contreras pens an essay on the relationship between the consolidation of the state in Bolivia and the evolution of the engineering profession. His article contains stimulating observations on the obstacles posed to the consolidation of the engineering profession by, for example, the higher prestige initially attached to medicine than to engineering because medicine was seen as part of the humanities. Contreras also explores both the usefulness of a corps of mining engineers to Bolivia during the Chaco war and the subsequent redeployment of surplus engineers in road and irrigation projects. The book concludes with a valuable guide by the editor to the archives and libraries on the history of science in Lima.
Cueto and the Institute de Estudios Peruanos are to be commended for their initiative in preparing and publishing this book. Given the substantial contributions made by historians of adjacent countries on such themes as the history of mining and technical education, the scope for further such collaborative volumes that involve Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela—as well as the three countries represented here—is considerable.
