[The National Museum of Chilean Medicine: I. The Colonial period].

The first museum of Chilean Medicines was founded by Dr Enrique Laval in 1955. The new museum is a fusion of this one and patrimony of the School of Medicine and the ancient San Vicente Hospital. It was created in 1987 by the present Dean, Aleksandar Goic. The present article describes one of the halls, the Colony. Pictures of Governors and Conquerors who founded the first hospitals are in display. The period of Religious Medicine (1616-1823) is represented by pictures and religious objects, as well as hospital utensils. The times of the University of San Felipe and the "Protomedicato" (1756-1839) includes pictures and documentation from the first colonial physicians. Chilean medicine at that time stayed at a medieval level, lacking the influence of the Renaissance, the Barroque and other movements enlighting european medicine.