Everybody is aware of that cannibalism was practiced extensively in pre-Colombian Mexico. Go surfing and you’ll rapidly be taught that 15,000 to twenty,000 Aztecs had been sacrificed every year. This “reality” colours our view of that civilization, and makes it a bit easier to give a pass to the conquistadors who, for all their very own rapacity, introduced “civilization” to the New World and ended cannibalism.
However, it now seems, this frequent perception is sort of utterly flawed, and the bigger lesson to be discovered can and must be utilized broadly. Even cardiologists (and different physicians) can profit from this lesson, even if there aren’t any DRG or ICD codes for cannibalism (so far as I do know).
In When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting That Changed History Matthew Restall explains why the estimates of cannibalism are virtually definitely ridiculously overstated. In a review of the book Álvaro Enrigue writes that “most estimates of the frequency of human sacrifices in Tenochtitlan come from an unfounded assertion by the Franciscan friar Diego Valadés, who was born twenty-two years after the town fell.”
Enrique writes that the estimate of 15,000-20,000 sacrifices every year is “preposterous,” because it assumes the Aztecs carried out “greater than 137 sacrifices a day, 5 an hour, one each twelve minutes, twenty-four hours a day,” particularly since “Aztec sacrifice was a nonmechanized course of that demanded in depth ritual preparation and an individually chosen sufferer.” “Archaeologists,” he notes, “have by no means discovered proof to assist the Spaniards’ figures.”
How, then, within the absence of strong proof did such a outstanding delusion take maintain? Enrique writes:
“Restall reveals that whereas the Aztecs did certainly observe ritual cannibalism, the fixation on the consuming of human flesh within the earliest European accounts of Mexico had a mercantile motive: owing to a royal legislation from 1503, an enemy fighter who practiced cannibalism could possibly be enslaved for all times, and shortly earlier than Cortés left Cuba for Mexico a smallpox epidemic prompted a drastic discount in native guide labor within the Caribbean. The later narratives that had been so insistent with regards to cannibalism are all the time, in Restall’s view, associated to the conquistador era’s declare to cost-free indigenous servitude.”
It must be mentioned: we’re ALL conquistadors, cardiologists included. The conquistadors could have conquered the brand new world however they didn’t conquer human nature. Lots has modified since Cortes and Montezuma, however human nature is cussed, and we are able to solely see issues via our personal two eyes and with the background of our personal self curiosity.
If you happen to profit from discovering cannibals then you will see that extra cannibals, and in case you profit from discovering and treating coronary heart illness then you will see that and deal with extra coronary heart illness.
The proof that this impact is current in cardiology is overwhelming. Think about the research, too quite a few to say right here, exhibiting overuse of exams and units, or the DOJ investigation into the overuse of ICDs. Probably the most publicized circumstances, just like the Mark Midei case in Maryland and comparable civil and felony circumstances in lots of different states, symbolize the tip of the iceberg. They’re solely probably the most seen and egregious circumstances.
Now I do know that quite a lot of cardiologists (and lots of others) will take offense at being in comparison with rapacious conquistadors. In fact they’re proper. Nobody is accusing cardiologists of genocide. However on the subject of the power to see the reality past our personal self curiosity we’re all, alas, similar to the conquistadors.
(Wikimedia Commons)
