Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition by Bernard R. Ortiz De Montellano - 1990

New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Hardcover. Good (ex-library with labels and stamps on spine, block, inside front and rear covers and title page verso. Light soiling to upper block, light shelfwear but pages are otherwise clean.). Brown cloth boards with gilt lettering; tan dj with black lettering and bw illustration, mylar cover; xvi, 308 pp, bw illustrations. Why were a handful of Spaniards able to overthrow the Aztec Empire? The dramatic destruction of the Aztecs has prompted historians, anthropologists, demographers, and epidemiologists to look closely at the health and nutrition of the Valley of Mexico. If the Aztecs were overcrowded, living at the edge of starvation, and incapable of treating disease effectively, then their decimation by the Europeans becomes much easier to understand. Bernard Ortiz de Montellano argues that such hypotheses do not hold up. Rather, at the time of the Conquest, the Aztecs were a thriving, well-nourished, healthy people. The swift, brutal success of… Read More