Aztec Herbal. Badianus Manuscript.

The people of North and South America also used medicinal herbs. Over thousands of years, the people of North and South Americas accumulated a vast store of botanical and medical knowledge, a fact that surprised many European explorers in the sixteenth century.

The Aztecs may have had as many as 3,000 different medicinal herbs. In 1552, two Native American students at the College of Santa Cruz in Tlaltilulco, Martinus de la Cruz and Juannes Badianus, compiled a list of herbs that had been used as medicines for centuries by the Aztecs. Martinus wrote, and probably illustrated, the original Aztec text, and Badianus translated the work into Latin. The Badianus Manuscript is the oldest known American herbal.

For Injured Body
Cortez and other Spanish explorers referred to the skill of Aztec doctors in treating cuts and bruises. The following is a rather complex, multi-herb recipe for the treatment of the “injured and roughly-handled body”
For Lightning Stroke
One who is touched by heaven or struck by lightning is to drink a well-mixed potion made from the leaves of trees, namely, ayauhquahuitl (a variety of pine) and tepapaquiltiquahuitl (“painted tree”), an unusually green cypress, the shrub yztauhyatl (“salty water plant”), the herb quauhyyauhtil (“wild or wood incense”) and teamoxtli (“stone plant”). Whenever the potion is to be given, it should be heated over the fire.