As for medical care and services to its inhabitants, the capital of the New Kingdom of Granada was always a dramatic late compared with the two great capitals of the English empire in the Indies, ie, Mexico and Lima.
These cities had enough doctors, best hospitals, chairs of medicine as advanced as possible at the time and courts of Harley Street who had nothing to envy the English.
Meanwhile, the isolated Santafé deficiencies in this respect were extremely acute and a constant throughout the colonial period. This contrast is explicable if one considers that the few doctors who ventured to go back to Santa Fe and usually end up regretting moving to more rich and prosperous kingdoms or your own country.
The main determinant of this phenomenon was the size of the white population and a very low level of income to meet medical stipends.
generally more tended to remain were those who came in delegations lofty character as was the case of Don Jose Celestino Mutis, who came to Santa Fe as the personal physician of Viceroy Pedro de la Cerda Messia.
Inadequate medical graduates or medical professors, as they were called, allowed people from all walks of Santa Fe Area, in sickness and times of calamity, were under the practical medical care and traditional healers.
It was a group consisting of empirical, self-taught and learned, if not were people of similar profession (surgeons, barbers, and pharmacists), who after accreditation in their specialty, were improvised as doctors, prescribe to many patients and friends.
This set of anonymous and often embarrassing, would fill most of the medical history of Santa Fe. 3301940916609711