Conclusion

Abstract

This section briefly discusses the place of sixteenth century print medical texts written by authors who resided in colonial Mexico within the larger context of the study of Latin American letters. It stresses the need to maintain a distinction between presence and influence when assessing the significance of their texts within larger cultural traditions, both in the context of colonial writing and as outputs conditioned by the logic of scientific progress moving into the seventeenth century, which saw some of the most widely disseminated sources of the previous era slip into obscurity as new medical findings superseded earlier formulations. The conclusion remarks on the important role played by this group of radicado figures who authored the print medical books of early modern Mexico, considering how they articulated intellectual positions that both anticipated and differed from later criollo responses to colonial mechanisms for marginalisation and exclusion.