Talk:Aztec medicine

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2020 and 20 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Rade0400. Peer reviewers: ImHereForClass.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:45, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Derekay2, K-star, Murph0008, Checkerstar. Peer reviewers: Jmg6x2, Kjs273.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 15:07, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Adding subjects
I would suggest adding subjects rather than just throwing information into the body of this article. Below is a list of ideas, because lists are nice, that I think can be worked on.Derekay2 (talk) 18:14, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

....Ideas for subjects Sacrifices Actual knowledge of human and animal anotomy Society class differences and value of medicine Surgery Health Nutrition

Herbal Medicine
I plan on adding an extensive list of herbal medicines used, and their purpose. Ortiz does a wonderful job in an article and, supposedly a book, of thoroughly describing the medicine used, and giving incite to the aztec few on health and medicine. I have listed my sources below because I have not taken sufficient time to check that I have sited them correctly.

Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard. (1975). Empirical Aztec Medicine. Science (New York, N.Y.). 188. 215-20. 10.1126/science.1090996. Ortiz de Montellano, Bernardo, 1899-. Aztec Medicine, Health, And Nutrition. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990

Derekay2 (talk) 22:07, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Added table including extensive list of herbs by botanical name, Aztec name and uses. Many parts of this table ARE copied from table 1 of Empirical Aztec medicine. If you have other ideas of how to better cite this as to avoid plagiarism, please place them here, because my intent is not to plagiarize, but it is difficult with the table format. This table does an amazing job of showing how well the Aztecs understood medicine, and it shows rather than tells how extensive their knowledge was. Derekay2 (talk) 16:53, 13 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Had issue with references. Went in and added corrected references.


 * Adding info about Aztec herbal gardens.


 * Made changes to clarify Aztec "effectiveness" with empirical bases.


 * Removed parts about religion as it has been talked about more thoroughly in other sections. Left the example about internal heat to add insight and context to Aztec effectiveness.


 * The Aztecs had several misconceptions on the contributing factors of illness and health. For example, fever was caused by internal heat and was cured by using a purgative, digestive or diuretic to remove the heat from the body. In spite of their misconceptions of contributing factors, the medicine they used was highly effective for Aztec standards. This is because they often obtained the desired results, like their purgatives successfully evacuating the body. They even succeeded, though less often, at correctly treating the ailment. This shows a strong empirical basis for their knowledge of medicine. The table to the right shows only the well agreed upon herbs in the list of hundreds that were used.


 * Montezuma I had beautiful, extensive gardens near the palace that astonished the conquistadors. The gardens showed the Aztec's integration with, and dependence on nature. Many skilled craftsman and gardeners were employed to maintain and improve the gardens. Houses, paths, trees, flowers, ponds and engineered water flow were all organized by skilled masonry. Within all of this natural engineering, many medicinal herbs were maintained for actual use. Nature was a part of Aztec life, and they saw herbs as beautiful as flowers. The Spaniards admitted that their own knowledge of herbs was very limited while the Aztecs seemed to know about every herb and its use. Derekay2 (talk) 18:00, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia Project Traditional Medicine
This article consists of three paragraphs; this page fails to explain an entire civilizations medical knowledge. Please support wikipedia project traditional medicine, and help create comprehensive coverage of all known Aztec medicinal practices. CensoredScribe (talk) 05:23, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

"Patzin"?
I do not believe that patzin is an authentic or attested term used to describe medicinal practices and beliefs for Aztec / Nahua peoples. Instead, it appears to be a term more or less invented and exclusively used by New Age / neoshamanistic practitioner, Patrisia Gonzales. Her descriptions of what "respect-worthy medicine" entails is AFAIK largely her own interpretation/synthesis, not any actual scholarly description of medicinal beliefs and practices among nahuatl-speaking peoples, past or present.

The term is presumably constructed as an amalgam of the honorific or diminuitive affix -tzin with the 1st syllable of pa(h)tli, a nahuatl word that can mean "medicine". I don't think it'd be a correct formation, I gather for such an intended meaning it'd be more correctly pahtzintli, that's at least a term that is found in some of the sources, eg Ruiz de Alarcón's Treatise on the heathen superstitions that today live among the Indians.. (though not quite with the same baggage/interpretation that Gonzales' writings give it).

In any case, I would not regard Gonzales or the ext links given as sources for the content here as being WP:RS for actual aztec/nahua medicine.

It's a valid enough topic, but I don't think the present content, sources or terminology passes muster. Propose to just rename this as Aztec medicine or similar, & replace the content with something based on more reliable sources.--cjllw ʘ  TALK 03:48, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Agree completely. There is a lot of reliable sources on real Aztec medicine.·Maunus· ƛ · 12:08, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I tried to be bold and move it to Aztec medicine but that's a redirect to Aztec society so I couldn't. ·Maunus· ƛ · 12:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thx for the confirmations. I've deleted the rdir target and now moved this article to Aztec medicine. Will commence on replacing the content with something more in tune with the actual topic, and add in a couple of more reliable sources as a start.--cjllw ʘ  TALK 23:02, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Divine Illnesses
I am adding a section about the beliefs of the Aztec as far as their gods pertain to illness. Murph0008 (talk) 16:07, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Your sources were input incorrectly and conflicted with others in the article. Sources 1 and 2 in divine illnesses and herbal medicine are referencing the incorrect sources because the correct sources were not added into the reference section properly.Please re-input your citations. K-star (talk) 16:54, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I would like to combine our two sections about the Aztec beliefs into one section. We both mention the water god and the flayed god in these sections and I think it would be very easy to make this one complete detailed section. If you and your partner are okay with it, I will move everything together before Friday and you both can focus on your other section; respond if this will be an issue. K-star (talk) 00:45, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

I agree that our two sections have a lot of overlap and should be combined. Do you already have a plan of how to combine them?Murph0008 (talk) 15:50, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

I added links to the wikipedia articles about specific topics mentioned in this section. If there are other pages that might make this section more comprehensive please add them or let me know.Murph0008 (talk) 17:18, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

New Section: Medical beliefs
We are adding a new section detailing the Aztec's beliefs in regards to Medicinal practice, including the three souls, their influence on a person's life, the medical calendar, and the different types of illness. Checkerstar (talk) 16:18, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Cleaned up the Medical beliefs section, edited for grammar, usage, and formatting, and reworded a few sentences according to peer feedback. Also added a few links to outside articles. Checkerstar (talk) 22:32, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Combining belief sections
There are 2 sections that all are basically saying the same thing but in different, words. I am going to combine system and medical beliefs into one complete section so that the article reads better. The sentences in system are good for an intro into the medical beliefs paragraph. Much of the same information is also listed in divine illnesses as is medical beliefs, so I will utilize check with the other student group before making any changes to their section, making sure not to just completely delete one section. Also I responded to peer feedback and included the suggestions in the article revisions. K-star (talk) 00:33, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

old references section
The article had the references. Aguilar-Moreno, Manuel (2007). Handbook to Life in the Aztec World. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-533083-0. OCLC 81150666. Barrios, Juan de (1607). Verdadera medicina, cirugía y astrologia en tres libros dividida (in Spanish). Mexico: Fernando Balli. OCLC 14314843. Fields, Sherry Lee (2008). Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico (online publication, originally presented as the author's PhD dissertation [University of California-Davis, 2003]). Gutenberg-e series (e-book ed.).

But there were no citations for the information it corresponded to so I removed them from the section. K-star (talk) 22:13, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

references and sources
Made some simple changes to the reference and section format. Ex. the reference section used to incorrectly be titled external links, and sources was titled references. Derekay2 (talk) 17:46, 10 November 2017 (UTC)


 * 1 65.20.197.111 (talk) 16:51, 28 March 2023 (UTC)