The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic

315 Pages·2017·20.619 MB·English

by  Pablo F. Gómez

The Experiential Ca rib bean
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The Experiential Ca rib bean
Creating Knowledge and Healing
in the Early Modern Atlantic
PABLO F. GÓMEZ
The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill
This book was published with the assistance of the Authors Fund of the
University of North Carolina Press.
Support for this publication was also provided by the University of Wisconsin—
Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education
with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
© 2017 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Set in Charis and Lato by Westchester Publishing Ser vices
Manufactured in the United States of Amer i ca
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member
of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Gómez, Pablo F., author.
Title: The experiential Ca rib bean : creating knowledge and healing in the
early modern Atlantic / Pablo F. Gómez.
Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2017] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2016031011| isbn 9781469630861 (cloth : alk. paper) |
isbn 9781469630878 (pbk : alk. paper) | isbn 9781469630885 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Traditional medicine— Caribbean Area— History—
17th century. | Healing— Caribbean Area— History—17th century. |
Experiential learning— Caribbean Area— History—17th century. |
Free blacks—C aribbean Area—H istory—17th century.
Classification: lcc gr120 .g65 2017 | ddc 615.509729—d c23
lc rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2016031011
Cover illustration: Detail of “Il missionario incendia la capanna dello stregone,”
from Bernardino Ignazio da Vezza [d’Asti], “Missione in prattica [dei] Padri
cappuccinni ne’ Regni di Congo, Angola, et adiacenti.” Courtesy of Direzione
Cultura, Educazione e Gioventù, Servizio Biblioteche, Torino, Italy.
Portions of chapter 3 were previously published in “The Circulation of
Bodily Knowledge in the Seventeenth Century Black Spanish Ca rib bean,”
Social History of Medicine 26, no. 3 (2013): 383–402. Used here by
permission of Oxford University Press.
Portions of chapter 7 were previously published in “Incommensurable
Epistemologies?: The Atlantic Geography of Healing in the Early Modern
Black Spanish Ca ribb ean,” Small Axe: A Ca rib bean Journal of Criticism 44
(2014): 95–107. Republished with permission of the copyright holder,
Duke University Press.
Para Margarita y Gustavo
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Contents
Acknowl edgments, xi
Note on Sources, xvii
Introduction, 1
1 Arrivals, 16
2 Landscapes, 39
3 Movement, 70
4 Sensual Knowledge, 95
5 Social Pharmacopeias, 118
6 Astounding Creativity, 145
7 Truth and the Experiential, 166
Conclusion, 191
Notes, 197
Bibliography, 237
Index, 267
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Figures, Maps, and Tables
Figures
6.1. Ritual prac ti tion ers manipulating the weather in West Central Africa
(Matamba), ca. 1687, 149
6.2. Map of the Villa del Cayo and surrounding settlements, ca. 1681, 157
7.1. Detail of painting depicting ritual tools from Sogno, Kingdom of
Kongo, 177
Maps
1.1. Selected Ca rib bean locales in the seventeenth century, 21
2.1. Cartagena de Indias in the seventeenth century, 53
Tables
1.1. Ca rib bean vecinos population, ca. 1653, 1682, and 1688, 25
2.1. Ritual prac ti tion ers of African descent in the long
seventeenth- century Ca ribb ean, 61
5.1. Summary of the inventory of the medicines that Justiniano
Justiniani, the factor of Domingo Grillo and Ambrosio Lomelín
in Panama, owed to Doña Thomasa Árias Navarro, apothecary.
Portobelo, Panama, 1666, 123
5.2. Medicines for the treatment of slaves in the coast of Guyana,
1683–86, 126
7.1. Botanical products used in healing practices by seventeenth- century
black Ca rib bean ritual specialists, 182