“Mas quien yerra obedeciendo, no desmerece errando”. A dispute on the qualities of the mercury between two surgeons of the New Spain (1648-1649)

Abstract

Is revealed that the only two medicine books from New Spain consecrated to the qualities of the Mercury are related with a dispute. This disagreement takes place in the Tratado de la qualidad manifiesta, que el Mercurio tiene (1648), written by the surgeon and Latin scholar, Juan de Correa, and in the Tratado de la qualidad manifiesta, y virtud del azogue (1649), written by the illiterate in Latin Language, andº also a surgeon, Hernando Bezerra. The three mayor arguments that fights in this intellectual, academic and scholar duel are based by several traits in common, textual and paratextual. It is concluded that, in the configuration of ideas and the conceptualization of the mercury, not only the auctoritas which guides and the own experience of the surgeon is decisive, but also, the different narratives –hagiographic tales, tales of the otherness and tales of the metal-genesis, etc.– shape the judgment and action of the surgeons. That is to say, in the configuration of a dispute over the degrees and healing properties of the mercury, were directly involved in realities that only exist in the text and the tradition of a narrative that believed it capable of healing illnesses such as the Syphilis