In this groundbreaking study on the intersection of race, science, and politics in colonial Latin American, José Jouve Martín explores the reasons why the city of Lima, in the decades that preceded the wars of independence in Peru, became dependent on a large number of bloodletters, surgeons, and doctors of African descent. The Black Doctors of Colonial Lima focuses on the lives and fortunes of three of the most distinguished among this group of black physicians: José Pastor de Larrinaga, a surgeon of controversial medical ideas who passionately defended the right of scientific learning for Afro-Peruvians; José Manuel Dávalos, a doctor who studied medicine at the University of Montpellier and played a key role in the smallpox vaccination campaigns in Peru; and José Manuel Valdés, a multifaceted writer who became the first and only person of black ancestry to become a chief medical officer in Spanish America. By carefully documenting their actions and writings, The Black Doctors of Colonial Lima illustrates how medicine and its related fields became areas in which the descendants of slaves found opportunities for social and political advancement, and a platform from which to engage in provocative dialogue with Enlightenment thought and social revolution.

José R. Jouve Martín is associate professor of Hispanic and Latin American studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University.

José R. Jouve Martín's profile page

“Black Doctors of Colonial Lima is a window onto the surprising careers of Lima’s Afro-Peruvian medical professionals, but also onto the medical debates of that city’s Enlightenment intellectuals. It is a welcome addition to the literature on science in t

“The author’s prudent usage of archival and published sources, along with his jargon-free and straight-on writing, make this illuminating study not only required reading for scholars in critical race studies, colonial Latin American studies, and medicine,

“The Black Doctors of Colonial Lima presents a nuanced argument not only about Peruvian medical culture and Peru’s Enlightenment, but also about the politics of race and blackness during the long transition from colony to independent republic. Jouve Martí

“An excellent, needed, and original contribution to our understanding of the black experience in Spanish America.” Jorge Carlos Guerrero, Spanish and Latin American Studies, University of Ottawa

“The rich portrayal of these three doctors, make this book a fine contribution not only to the history of medicine in late colonial and early republican Peru, but more generally to the study of the experience of African descended peoples in the Americas.” Social History of Medicine

“This well-written book will be of interest to scholars of both the history of medicine and science in Spanish America, especially during the Enlightenment, and the history of race, social relations, and politics in late colonial and early republican Peru