Magic, popular medicine and gender in seventeenth-century Mexico: The case of Isabel de Montoya

One of Montoya’s patients, for example, the wife of a local dignitary in Mexico City, described her own experience in Montoya’s lodgings to the Inquisitors. The woman, to whom Montoya was recommended by a friend, suffered from recurring fits. On entering the house she asked Montoya if she knew how to cure or deliver a baby. Montoya responded that she knew all forms of cures, and was also a midwife. T h e patient undressed, lay on a mattress and was anointed with a green unguent, while Montoya recited the Credo. She then told the woman to confess, and to trust God, ’who cured whole’, and sold her the ointment.