Diagnósticos y tratamientos de las mujeres en Zacatecas, México (1891-1892)

Abstract

This article addresses the main diseases that occurred among women from Zacatecas, Mexico who were treated at the Civil Hospital. To carry out this investigation, the investigation of the Archive of the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Incorporated fund of the Civil Hospital was used; series: tall; box 1; folders: from 6 to 7. From the investigation it was possible to obtain information from endless registration tickets and, above all, from a registration book that covers the years 1891 to 1892. It addresses a series of variables or categories that gave the possibility of carrying out a study of the ailments for which women of various ages and marital status were admitted and, also, to know the treatments that were provided to them, mostly based on tonics and ointments derived from medicine traditional, even though the scientific discoveries made by Pasteur to whom we owe the technique known as pasteurization that allowed the use of autoclave sterilization and who also refuted the theory by spontaneous generation and developed the germ theory of infectious diseases and is considered the pioneer of modern microbiology; for his part, Robert Kock who in 1882 discovered the tuberculosis bacillus and the cholera bacillus in 1883. Despite these scientific advances somewhat contemporary to the time of this study, we can observe through the tonics prescribed to patients that they have nothing to do with any of the scientific advances mentioned, on the contrary, there is a permanence in the use of remedies based on traditional medicine, thereby showing that scientific and medical theories did not arrive with the same promptness and intensity at all latitudes of the world.