La enseñanza en la antigua Facultad de Medicina en el siglo XVIII

Abstract

Objective: exhibit the teaching of medicine within the seventeenth century’s historical context in the recent Faculty of Medicine, its teaching programs and the first doctors who had to face the great epidemics of the Royal Audience of Quito.
Methods: this article is a descriptive historical study based on documents and studies that have been published on different dates within the historical analysis of Ecuadorian medicine by different authors.
Discussion and analysis: for this reason, in the recent Faculty of Medicine, founded on April 13th, 1693 in the Royal Audience of Quito, the Faculty of Medicine began to teach anatomy, pathology, and therapy through galenic method, following the theories of humors, miasmas, pneuma and other environmental influences that caused the diseases, whose therapy consisted of purges, enemas and bloodletting. The first doctors of Quito, due to the poor hygienic conditions of the city, had to face a series of epidemics that decimated the population, so the people, mostly indigenous, turned to indigenous ancestral medicine that enriched classic medicine with its phytodrugs that incorporated between other herbs to the quina, the coca and tobacco. Colonial medicine had to wait for the arrival of French doctors, with the first Geodesic Mission in 1936, to incorporate the new scientific advances of the old continent by restructuring medical teaching in the Faculty of Medicine that took another course after the independence of the Homeland.
Conclusion: since its foundation in 1693, the Faculty of Medicine of Quito taught Galenic method anatomy, pathology, and therapy, however, due to environmental and social conditions resorted to indigenous ancestral medicine that enriched with its phytodrugs to medicine classic. It was not until 1936 that the influence of the old world changed the criteria in the teaching of medical art.