Aztec Medical Practices And Beliefs Essay

The Aztecs had one of the most successful and advanced empires of all time. They had a dwelling culture The Aztec civilization was located directly in the middle of two mountain ranges in the central valley of Mexico ( Platt 10). Although the Aztec empire eventually came to an end they were able to do well as an empire. Contributing factors that led to the rise of the empire was their political structure, social components, and religious traditions which they preformed earnestly.

     The Aztecs were an American Indian people who ruled a mighty empire in Mexico from the 1400's to the 1500's. The Aztecs had one of the most advanced civilizations in the Americas and built cities as large as any in Europe at that time. They also practiced a remarkable religion that affected every part of their lives and featured human sacrifice. The Aztecs built towering temples, created huge sculptures, and held impressive ceremonies all for the purpose of worshipping their gods. The Spaniards destroyed their magnificent empire in the year 1521, but the Aztecs left a lasting mark on Mexican life and culture .

The great Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlán was overpowered and taken by Hernán Cortés. When the empire fell, many Aztecs were infected with a disease from Europe, smallpox. It was their first exposure to the disease and they had no immunity. Over a course of months, the culture and civilization of the fallen empire have changed.Numerous people wonder about the Aztecs who have survived and still remain in Tenochtitlán. On a trip to the city, we stopped an Aztec resident on the street to answer a few questions. The resident requested to remain anonymous for safety reasons.

The ancient Aztec civilization is usually thought of as a barbaric, unintelligent people throughout modern society. This could be an ideal carried down from the Spaniards that concord the native lands or even something as simple as today’s society creating overblown stereotypes because of conjoined lack of understanding and overall knowledge. But, because of the extensive research and studies done by Miguel León-Portilla we are able to discover the true nature of the Aztec peoples way of life. Within the book “Aztec Thought and Culture” the author explains the develop of the Aztec civilization through education and philosophy as well as describing the Aztec people as an advanced society rather than the popular belief of a savage people and culture.

When the Spaniards under Hernan Cortez gazed upon the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in Mexico in 1519, the scene before them amazed them. There, in the middle of a wide lake was a shimmering city with bright white walls of vast buildings sitting on an island in the middle of a large lake with causeways linked to it. The astonishment of those first Spanish visitors soon turned to horror when they saw the vast scale of ritual sacrifices made by the Aztecs.

It was the year 1495, on a hot summer day in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, located in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. The Aztec priest stood over the altar on top of the the great pyramid dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, with the sedated body of his offering laid in front of him. He raised his knife over his head, and with one swift movement, he cut the chest of his sacrifice open and ripped out his heart, crowds cheering all around him. What people might not know is that the body was then taken to the royal palace to be examined by shamans and doctors for medical research. During the rule of Montezuma II, the Aztec were one of the most hygienic and medically advanced civilizations of the

An Incan or Aztecs day consists of raising their kids, getting market goods, tending crops on terraces, construction of temples and other buildings, also depending on what type of month it is there’s usually a religious activity involving human sacrifice. Aztecs everyday life was like in most modern day cultures the father works in able to sustain his family. Woman usually cleaned, cooked, weaved and cared for their children. Men educated their sons till the age of ten; from their they were sent to a school connected to a temple which taught them about religion and military skills, girls could also attend school but other than that they usually stayed home.

Aztec practice religions of many gods. They had sun gods. Two of the sun gods were Ehecatl and Huitzilopochtli. The Aztec believed that if you added his or her blood they would come back to life. Also, they repaid people by sacrificing. The two things they feared most was natural and the world ending. For example, they thought that the world was going to in 52 years. They thought there was 13 layers in heavens and 9 layers in the underworld.

How did the entire Aztec population get wiped out? In theses two books I read, “Conquest of New Spain“ by Bernal Castillo and “Broken Spears” by Miguel Portilla, to piece together to form my own opinion of how a small group of Spaniards was able to completely take control of and completely wipe out the Aztec empire.

The Natives of California distinguish plants and animals into diverse locations of botany and zoology . They learn to cultivate throughout the views of animals and by creating a food chain that benefited the tribe. Many native tribes observed the environmental system that either made other species survive and extinct. The natives were considered to be curious about the environment they lived that prepared them want to learn, observe, and practice rituals. The natives were uninformed that religious ritual such as coordinating the sun and moon movement was practical rituals of much groundwork for collecting food and building supplies. Like many other American native groups they established and discover valuable properties of plants. Using kernels, plant roots, tree barks and herbal leaves as curative purposes. As the native embarked a lot of nature resources there were many that are ineffective and some are used in today’s modern medicine.

Maya culture is one of the oldest and most intelligent tribal races. The flourishing period of Maya was between 300 and 900. The principal food in Maya was maize, which was also called “the maize culture”. They had no livestock such as sheep and horses. Also, they made the calendar and divided a year to 18 months. In addition, they built huge stone temples and held bloodletting ceremonies in order to sacrifice

Latin America covers over 400 different indigenous tribes and over 40 different coutries which offers for a great deal in diversity of their way of life. Basing on the colonial invasion in the 15th and the early 16th centuary was also a great mark of diversity and introduction of new ways of lives. Due to the wild precolonial life some tribes lived in the mountains and forests which exposed them to many plant species with medicianal value to them thus the development of traditional healers amongst the communities. Traditional Healers share a profound knowledge and a deep understanding of how natural laws influence living things The church came with the in vasion of the colonialists. All these had a great impact on their way of life and general believes too.

Tessa Vossen and colleagues illustrated the back-story of Suriname and its role in slavery, studies of illnesses as well as native medicines. Vossen’s provides a combined analysis towards the role herbal plants and natural medicines in attempt to grasp the intersection of the relationship between slaves and type of medical care provided. “Through the examination of distinct conceptions of the human body, physicians were able to demonstrate intellectual, social and physical constructs of healing for it” . Perceptions of health and illness include ailments generally centered to certain geographic regions or cultural groups. Some cultural bound syndromes were often treated with medicinal plants with the aim of curing ailments that manifested during

As the institutes across the world progress in the fields of medicine, they still advance in the same manner as the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica. The outlook on medicine was made more scientifically relevant throughout each of the Mesoamerican civilizations, Mayan, Incan, and Aztec. Each tribe had a different view when it came to the topic of medicine, but for the most part they utilized herbal ingredients and other natural remedies. Today, when we think of medicine we picture ground-breaking treatments in hospitals and labs filled with 3-D printers of organs and centrifuges spinning the latest vaccines. In the times of tribesmen and hunter-gatherers, the perception of medicine was quite different. These people believed that the body, the physical being, and the soul, the spiritual being, were meant to be treated as a whole. Therefore, they were convinced that healing the soul would consequently cure the body of all ailments and vice versa. They did not have the knowledge that we possess today but they still managed to step forth into the frontier of healthcare with their beliefs and nature by their side. The three primary Mesoamerican tribes believed that illness was a result of the way people lived out their lives spiritually, and the practitioners of the era relied on herbs and rituals for cures.

Herbal medicine is an aspect of the medical field that seems to have been overlooked in the past few decades, with the majority of focus on being western medicine. For thousands of years, indigenous peoples, and explorers alike counted on herbal remedies and medicines for treatment of wounds, personal hygiene, and curing sickness. The Aztec were a group that held a vast array of knowledge and skill in natural medicine, and even invested a great deal of energy into further researching herbal medicine. Unfortunately, Spanish friars destroyed all of the Aztec’s written records of botanical successes. After all, the priests considered the Aztecs’ as savage at the time. Even though there is much to be learned about Aztec natural medicine, there were many records kept by employees of the more enlightened members of the Spanish government. In this essay, the author will cover the few aspects known about Aztec medicine including the research they carried out in the name of Herbal medicine, a historical context behind medicinal practices among the Aztec, and also the plants and their uses.