2014 Buenos Aires Declaration on Humanism and Science in Latin America for Person Centered Medicine

Abstract

 Pre-Colombian medicine, initially identified in La Venta or Monte Alban as Mesoamerican civilized centers, like the Maya, Azteca and Inca cultures, was expressed within their cosmology in a religious-magical context in which the state of health or illness were strictly related to conditions of balance or imbalance. Their concept of health relies on a fundamental balance among the physical, social and religious dimensions of the person. Moderation in diet, exercise and behavior was considered essential for a healthy life. Prehispanic American medicine vision was holistic and integrative in context and in beliefs and was consistent with concepts of medicine and health in the earliest Asian and Hellenic civilizations, all of them fundamental roots of a medicine centered in the totality of the person. These historic notions are reflected in the comprehensive definition of health inscribed in the Constitution of the World Health Organization which refers to a dynamic state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease.