The History of Health and Medicine Seminar series welcomed Luz Maria Hernández-Sáenz today, who presented the lively story of Dona Maria Tiburcia Reynantes. 
Her paper “Between Medicine and Magic: the Story of an 18th century Mexican healer,” explored the rather fascinating case of a travelling healer in eighteenth century Mexico who combined magic and medicine with religiously ordained healing practice. In the case of Tiburcia, Dr. Hernández-Sáenz, utilized Inquisition records to explore the tale of a women who claimed to be able to cure illness, reunite the divorced and to even resuscitate the dead. Dr. Hernández-Sáenz completed her PhD at the University of Arizona at Tucson and is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario. She specializes in the social history of eighteenth and nineteenth Mexico.
The case of Tiburcia explores the merging of indigenous native with European medicine. According to Hernández-Sáenz, this was the story of women who walked a fine line between healer and witch and successfully avoided being branded by the inquisition until her behaviour challenged the authority of local priests. The inquisition in Mexico followed the same line as the Spanish with the added self-ordained responsibility for policing the moral tone of the country. Tiburcia, the healer wandered from town to town garbed in white wearing a large cross. She had her herbs and healing talismans blessed by the church and even made the sign of the cross over vital organs as part of her healing process. Her attention to vital organs however, belied a folk belief stemming from Aztec times in the balance between the brain, the heart and the liver. Moreover her reliance on folk remedies using native herb species was far from the European practice of the time.
When prayer and conventional medicine failed to cure illnesses, healers were the recourse and they practised their trade often with the tacit approval of the church. In this Tiburcia was no different. She seems to have set herself apart however in her fondness for alcohol and to invoking Satan when drunk in challenge to the local clergy. As Her..says, “she pushed limits too far and too often,” thus earning the censure of the inquisition and imprisonment that eventually led to her death.
Her story demonstrates an example of the merging of colloquial and scientific medicine, and reinforces that the indigenous practises have proved adaptable and maleable and continue to the present day.