Abstract

CRUZ CORTES, Noemí. The Teeth Worm: Medicine and Sympathetic Magic Among the Mayas. Estud. cult. maya [online]. 2012, vol.40, pp.167-189. ISSN 0185-2574.

This work deals with a common physical condition in the Mayan and Mesoamerican people: the pain caused by a worm that eats the teeth, called "the teeth worm". The idea to write this text comes from an oral recompilation, by the author, in the Tuxtlas, Veracruz, where this belief still stands. While listening to the narrator, it was inevitable not to relate it with colonial medical sources of the nineteenth century in the Mayan area that recorded this condition, and with some text of the Nahuatl zone. In this form, through historical development, we can analyze the disease caused by the teeth worm, understand the symbolic aspects that are involved in the creation and cure of this disease: specialists, deities, prayers, plants, animals and the use of sympathetic magic.

Keywords : disease; worm; teeth; symbolism; sympathetic magic.