Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Dedication
- Map 1 The Audiencia of Quito in the seventeenth century
- Introduction
- 1 Along the avenue of volcanoes
- 2 Disease, illness, and healing before 1534
- 3 Conquest and epidemic disease in the sixteenth century
- 4 Changing patterns of disease and demography in the seventeenth century
- 5 Disaster and crisis in the 1690s
- 6 Disease and demographic stagnation in the eighteenth century
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
2 - Disease, illness, and healing before 1534
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Dedication
- Map 1 The Audiencia of Quito in the seventeenth century
- Introduction
- 1 Along the avenue of volcanoes
- 2 Disease, illness, and healing before 1534
- 3 Conquest and epidemic disease in the sixteenth century
- 4 Changing patterns of disease and demography in the seventeenth century
- 5 Disaster and crisis in the 1690s
- 6 Disease and demographic stagnation in the eighteenth century
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
Summary
Although we can only speculate about the number of Indians living in the highlands of Ecuador before 1534, we can be certain of the ferocious destruction that accompanied the arrival of smallpox and measles. In order to comprehend the effects of these previously unknown infections and how they influenced the colonial experience of Ecuador's native inhabitants, we must first delineate the disease environment that existed before Europeans arrived. But it is equally important to understand pre-Columbian concepts regarding health, illness, and healing, because they too helped to determine the responses of Indian communities not only to invasion by Old World pathogens but also to the Spanish colonial system as it developed in the northern Andes.
The pathological setting
The most significant difference between patterns of disease in the Old and New Worlds was the absence of many “crowd-type” illnesses in pre-Columbian America. Native Americans had never experienced epidemics of smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, or cholera – all diseases that require dense human populations in which to proliferate. When the ancestors of American Indians crossed the Bering Strait they brought many diseases with them, but the cold of the far north and the rigors of the journey ensured that some of these organisms or their insect vectors died out.Even after permanent agricultural communities developed, population levels remained too low to sustain acute infections that relied on direct human transmission for their propagation.
Another factor contributing to the paucity of crowd-type diseases was the absence of domesticated mammals living in close proximity to human settlements.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador , pp. 19 - 31Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992