Populated by curanderos, midwives, bonesetters, witches, doctors, nurses, and the indigenous people they served, this nuanced history demonstrates how cultural and political history, misogyny, racism, and racialization influence public health. In the first half of the twentieth century, the governments of Ecuador and Guatemala sought to spread scientific medicine to their populaces, working to prevent and treat malaria, typhus, and typhoid; to boost infant and maternal well-being; and to improve overall health.
 
Drawing on extensive, original archival research, David Carey Jr. shows that highland indigenous populations in the two countries tended to embrace a syncretic approach to health, combining traditional and new practices. At times, both governments encouraged—or at least allowed—such a synthesis: even what they saw as "nonscientific" care was better than none. Yet both, especially Guatemala's, also wrote off indigenous lifeways and practices with both explicit and implicit racism, going so far as to criminalize native medical providers and to experiment on indigenous people without their consent. Both nations had authoritarian rule, but Guatemala's was outright dictatorial, tending to treat both women and indigenous people as subjects to be controlled and policed. Ecuador, on the other hand, advanced a more pluralistic vision of national unity, and had somewhat better outcomes as a result.

"Carey celebrates the alternative courses that people pursued to practice and receive care, illustrating that healing and medicine were constructed as much in rural communities as they were in laboratories and hospitals." * H-Net *
"Carey’s book is the best kind of historical research—it stirs curiosity in the reader and is certain to spur new histories of Indigenous medicine." * Hispanic American Historical Review *
"The text reveals a nuanced and more complex perspective of Indigenous interactions with the state’s public health systems, while also confirming the racism that continued to characterize state policies." * American Historical Review *

David Carey Jr. holds the Doehler Chair in History at Loyola University Maryland and is author of I Ask for Justice: Maya Women, Dictators, and Crime in Guatemala, 1898–1944 and Oral History in Latin America: Unlocking the Spoken Archive, among other books.