This groundbreaking volume explores two early and opposing Spanish medical perspectives on chocolate and other New World substances. In the early 1600s, doctors Bartolomé Marradón and Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma returned from travels to the Americas with starkly different views: Marradón cautioned against tobacco and offered only limited approval of chocolate, while Colmenero vigorously defended chocolate’s health benefits. Their writings, translated and circulated across Europe, helped transform chocolate from a medicinal drink into a global commodity. Featuring the first bilingual edition of Marradón’s Dialogue (1618)—in full Spanish and English—and a new bilingual presentation of Colmenero’s influential Curious Treatise (1631), this book provides rare insight into early modern medical thought, cultural exchange, and the globalization of taste. Essential for readers of food history, early modern medicine, and transatlantic interchange, it uniquely reveals how debates over health, culture, and commerce brewed in a cup of chocolate.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

SUSAN G. POLANSKY is a teaching professor emerita of Hispanic studies at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

List of Tables and Illustrations

Introduction

Part I   The Doctors’ Times and Views

1          The Two “Doctors”

2          Marradón and Colmenero: The Scientific and Social Contexts for their Works

3          Audience and Aims of the Works

4          The Openings of the Treatises by Marradón and Colmenero

5          Authority, Argument, and Portrayal of the Other: Marradon’s Consideration of Tobacco, Chocolate, and Several Medicinal Spirits

6          Authority, Argument, and Portrayal of the Other: Colmenero’s Consideration of Chocolate

7          Scholarly Attention to Marradón and Colmenero

Part II  The Two Works’ Impact

8          Translations Beyond the Borders of Spain

9          Localization in England and Wadsworth’s Translation: Chocolate Marketing to the Many for Health and Pleasure

10        Localization in France and the Translations by Moreau and Dufour: Patriotic Pride, Medical Advice, and Botanical Information for Doctors and “All Who Love Their Health”

11        Relocalization in England and Chamberlayne’s Translation:              For “All Good Men” to Understand the “Excellent Vertues” of Foreign Drugs and “to Admire and Bless” the Creator

12        Translation as a Project of Localization

13        A Note about Style

Part III  The Two Doctors’ Works

14        Diálogo del uso del Tabaco, los daños y provechos que el tiempo y experiencia an descubierto de sus efectos, y del Chocolate, y otras bevidas, que en estos tiempos se usan 

By Bartolomé Marradón

15        Dialogue on the Use of Tobacco, the Harms and Benefits that Time and Experience Have Discovered about Its Effects, and on Chocolate, and Other Beverages that Are Used in These Times

By Bartolomé Marradón

16        Curioso tratado de la naturaleza y calidad del Chocolate,dividido en quatro puntos

By Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma

17        A Curious Treatise on the Nature and Quality of Chocolate, Divided into Four Points

By Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index