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The prehispanic medicines of Mexico are considered as testimony of the splendor of the Meso-American cultures; their great scientific advance and technical allowed them to accumulate a vast collection of clinical and pathological data based on the observation and experimentation. They integrated a nomenclature medical surgical that reflected their advance in those fields of the knowledge, where the anatomy and surgery occupied a preponderant paper. The medicine was known generically as ticiotl, of where it derives the term tícitl for the doctor. In their concept health-illness the limits among the magic, religion and the empiricism for natural causes were not clear, therefore they considered that the divine, human or natural origin of the illnesses influenced in an important way in its nature. Inside this complex causal system, the illnesses caused by the gods, spirits and celestial beings were considered as hot, while those caused by beings of the other realm were cold. The practice of the medicine had a very established organization designing a very advanced system of specialties that allowed them to accumulate a vast experience for the handling of chronic and acute illnesses in different progression phases, which managed with an integral therapy that had a plurality of resources of vegetable origin, animal, and mineral. The surgery was designated as texoxotlaliztli and its cures tepatiliztli. The surgeon was designated as texoxotlaticitl and it developed advanced techniques in the handling of sutures, wounded, drainage of abscesses, fractures and joint dislocations, pterygium, tonsillitis, circumcision, and amputations.

After the Conquest, the indigenous populations of New Spain were left unprotected by the new government. Thus the Royal Hospital of Naturals (RHN) was created, offering care to the indigenous population for health and with hospitality, as well as religious aid. However, later solely care was provided. The RHN had great support from the Spanish Crown and became a suitable place for clinical investigation that on the peninsula and in all of Europe was forbidden: the autopsies, that in indigenous population are carried out without sanction, only needing authorization of local authorities for their accomplishment, considering the indigenous as inferior to Spaniards. In addition, the RHN was the best place for foundation of the Royal Surgery School of Mexico in the XVIII century. The contribution of the RHN was the fusion of indigenous medicine with European medicine, increasing the therapeutic resource array, as well as the opportunity of carrying clinic investigation through autopsy's for better clinic correlation, and matchless learning for the era in the art of out surgery, this being an important point in the development of the medicine and surgery of Mexico.