Lytico-bodig in Guam: Historical links between diet and illness during and after Spanish colonization (2021)
Giménez-Roldán, Santiago (Author)
Steele, John C. (Author)
Palmer, Valerie S. (Author)
Spencer, Peter S. (Author)
Journal of the History of the Neurosciences
Volume: 30
Issue: 4
Pages: 335-374
This paper analyses documents on health and disease among Chamorro people during and after 333 years (1565–1898) of the Spanish claim to and occupation of Guam. Here, a complex neurodegenerative disease—known locally as lytico-bodig and medically as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Parkinsonism-dementia complex (ALS/PDC)—reached hyperendemic proportions in the mid-twentieth century but then declined and is now disappearing. A tau-dominated polyproteinopathy, clinical phenotypes included amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or lytico), atypical parkinsonism with dementia (P-D or bodig), and dementia alone. A plausible etiology for lytico-bodig is consumption of flour derived from the incompletely detoxified seed of Cycas micronesica (fadang in Chamorro; Federico in Spanish), a poisonous gymnosperm that survives climatic extremes that can affect the island. Traditional methods for safe consumption appear to have been lost over the course of time since governors Francisco de Villalobos (1796–1862) and Felipe de la Corte (1855–1866) proposed banning consumption in view of its acute toxic effects. A death certificate issued in 1823 might suggest ALS/PDC in people dying with disability or impedidos, and premature aging and a short life was linked to food use of fadang in the mid-1850s (Guam Vital Statistics Report, 1823). During the Japanese occupation of Guam (1941–1944), Chamorro people took refuge in the jungle for months, where they relied on insufficiently processed fadang as a staple food. After World War II, traditional foods and medicines were subsequently replaced as islanders rapidly acculturated to North American life.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
William Eamon;
(2018)
Corn, Cochineal, and Quina: The “Zilsel Thesis” in a Colonial Iberian Setting
Book
Robins, Nicholas A.;
(2011)
Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes
Multimedia Object
Lance C. Thurner;
Bigelow, Allison Margaret;
(2020)
Allison Bigelow, “Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World” (UNC Press 2020)
Article
Timothy Bowers Vasko;
(2019)
‘That They Will Be Capable of Governing Themselves’: Knowledge of Amerindian Difference and Early Modern Arts of Governance in the Spanish Colonial Antilles
Book
W. George Lovell;
(2015)
Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500-1821, Fourth Edition
Article
Bradley Skopyk;
(2017)
Rivers of God, Rivers of Empire: Climate Extremes, Environmental Transformation and Agroecology in Colonial Mexico
Book
Householder, Michael;
(2011)
Inventing Americans in the Age of Discovery: Narratives of Encounter
Book
Rebecca Earle;
(2012)
The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America, 1492–1700
Article
Valle, Ivonne del;
(2013)
From José de Acosta to the Enlightenment: Barbarians, Climate Change, and (Colonial) Technology as the End of History
Book
Allison Margaret Bigelow;
(2020)
Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World
Article
Guido Pezzarossi;
(2020)
“Beyond” the Grid of Labor Control: Salvaged, Persisting, and Leaky Assemblages in Colonial Guatemala
Book
Nikolaus Klein;
Paul Oberholzer;
Esther Schmid Heer;
(2019)
Transfer, Begegnung, Skandalon? Neue Perspektiven auf die Jesuitenmissionen in Spanisch-Amerika
Article
Sandra Montón-Subías;
Almudena Hernando Gonzalo;
(2022)
Modern Colonialism and Cultural Continuity Through Material Culture: An Example from Guam and Chamoru Plaiting
Article
Ran Segev;
(2022)
'For the Sciences Migrate, Just Like People': The Case of Botanical Knowledge in the Early Modern Iberian Empires
Article
Ramos, Gabriela;
(2013)
Indian Hospitals and Government in the Colonial Andes
Article
Carlos Viesca Treviño;
Maríablanca Ramos de Viesca;
(2018)
Mexican Medicinal Plants a Therapeutic Resource of Physicians and Traditional Healers
Book
Matthew James Crawford;
Joseph M. Gabriel;
(2019)
Drugs on the Page: Pharmacopoeias and Healing Knowledge in the Early Modern Atlantic World
Article
Christine Folch;
(2021)
Ceremony, Medicine, Caffeinated Tea: Unearthing the Forgotten Faces of the North American Stimulant Yaupon (Ilex vomitoria)
Article
Magnone, Sophia;
(2014)
Bien Manger, Bien Mangé: Edible Reciprocity in Jean de Léry's Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil
Book
Silva, Ignacio Alberto;
(2014)
Latin American Perspectives on Science and Religion
Be the first to comment!