The paper presented by Teresa Vergara, part of the EDGES project and the activities promoted by CHAM's Environment, Interactions, and Globalisation research group, aims to raise awareness of ongoing research into the incorporation of indigenous knowledge into university medicine in the Viceroyalty of Peru in the early 19th century. The focus of this study is on the founding of the Royal College of Medicine and Surgery of San Fernando (1809), led by Hipólito Unanue, as the first institutional effort to integrate this knowledge into the academic curriculum. Faced with popular preference for traditional healing, Unanue promoted the integration of indigenous people through scholarships, enriching the discipline of Pharmacy with the vast herbal experience of the native peoples. In this context, it is questioned whether the need to systematise medicinal flora was, in fact, the main driver for the inclusion of indigenous populations in classrooms, seeking to reduce the gap between official knowledge and traditional therapeutic practices.
Teresa Vergara Ormeño
Historian from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. PhD in History from the University of Connecticut, United States. Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and member of the Steering Committee of the Andean Studies Programme at the same university. Specialist in social history, colonial Peruvian history and ethnohistory. She is currently working on her book about the social, economic, and political power structures of the indigenous population of Lima during the colonial period.
Recent publications:
"Ascensão social, controlo gremial e resistência confrarial: os silheiros indígenas de Lima (1744-1772)" (2025);
"O cabildo de índios de Lima: espaço de poder e presença política, séculos XVII e XVIII" (2024).
