El cuerno de unicornio en la Nueva España: conocimiento boticario y prescripción de médicos

Abstract

The pharmacopoeia in the New Spain identified that the Unicorn’s horn was a precious medicine, hard to obtain. This idea was inherited by the medieval medical assumptions, among which, there was no better remedy against the poisoning and similar symptoms. At the end of the XVIth century, the pharmacist, Francisco Vélez de Arciniega, in his Libro de los quadrupedes y serpientes terrestres recebidos en el uso de medicina, gathers this medieval tradition and rewrites it with erudition; tradition that becomes richer in the
New Spain context, with the elements of the native nature and the imaginary that aroused the curiosity of ancient physicians. Notwithstanding, in this article we will study that only a few medical works published in the New Spain will recommend the Unicorn’s horn: the ones related with peaceful times, without
cocolistle pandemic, works written with a philosophical-political intention to take care of the Republic (Problemas y secretos maravillosos de la Indias, 1591), works written with a quasi-encyclopedia intention and related with the Galenic-Arabic medical knowledge, and works seized and annotated from their original intentions (Tesoro de medicinas, 1674). Finally, the possession of the book, written by Vélez de Arciniega, in the Convento Grande de San Francisco in Mexico City, shows us that the idea of the Unicorn’s horn was
imported and it was part of an Aristotelian philosophy, that will be integrated in works written by future authors: such as the Teatro mexicano, 1698, the Florilegio medicinal, 1712 and recipes of medicines in Hospitals’ apothecaries in the New Spain (1798-1808).