Medical colonization of the new world.

THE discovery of America afforded the European nations vast opportunities for conquest and colonization, but two great powers among them, Spain and England, were foremost in taking up this challenge. Although both nations apparently had a similar background ofwestern culture, it must be remembered that their systems ofcolonization were rooted in different religious and political philosophies, and that the state of medical science in those two countries varied according to their political development. Historical analysis seems to indicate that the transfer of European medicine into America during the centuries of colonial administration was influenced more by religious and political factors than by the advanced level of medicine in the colonizing power, and, furthermore, that until the end of the eighteenth century, medicine in America depended almost entirely on European initiative, although it was adapted to the peculiar circumstances of the area.