Forbidden herbs: Alzate’s defense of pipiltzintzintlis (original) (raw)

Colonial Latin American Review, 2020

Abstract

In a 1772 newspaper article, José Antonio Alzate y Ramírez (1737–1799) defended the medicinal benefits of cannabis against the prohibition of the Inquisition. Alzate concluded that the indigenous herb pipiltzintzintlis was ‘nothing else but cannabis.’ As Spanish physician Juan de Cárdenas contended almost two centuries earlier, Alzate argued for a disassociation of the plant’s narcotic or hallucinogenic properties and effects from its potential demonic influence. In the following pages, I investigate the Church’s prohibition of the herb pipiltzintzintlis. I analyze Alzate’s evidence in support of medicinal cannabis use, ranging from firsthand experience to second-hand accounts to medical encyclopedias, thereby exposing the range of eighteenth-century sources supporting medicinal marijuana use. I end with conclusions on the epistemic value bestowed on different sources of scientific evidence in eighteenth-century Mexico and on the role that censorship played in the circulation of scientific knowledge.

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