ABSTRACT
Students of medical history are well aware of the weaknesses of eighteenth-century military hospitals and of the low level of health care in all European armies. Battlefield medicine consisted of little more than surgeons who, under the filthiest of conditions, hacked off wounded limbs and abandoned men unfortunate enough to have received severe internal wounds to almost certain sepsis. While the personal hygiene of the soldier had become a subject for study in France by the mid-eighteenth century, most army physicians lacked even elementary knowledge about sanitation, nutrition, and the psychological state of their troops. To attack disease, they offered a range of emetics, purgatives, and other remedies that produced violent results but cured few of the ailments suffered by their patients. The army of New Spain offers an excellent vehicle through which to study approaches to disease control and the state of hospital and health care in a Spanish province.
