jEfcucation, 101 



invading race. Thus, ninety years before the landing of the Pilgrims, 

 the City of Mexico had its " Harvard." 



Universities Established by the Spanish Government. The first vice- 

 roy of New Spain, as Mexico was called then, fourteen years after 

 the conquest, petitioned the King of Spain to permit him to found 

 a university in Mexico, and, anticipating from his knowledge of the 

 good-will of the Spanish-rulers that the desired permission would 

 be given, the viceroy took the responsibility of establishing certain 

 classes in the higher learning, a fact which does not support the 

 commonly held theory that Spain has always been the enemy of edu- 

 cation and of popular enlightenment. Owing to the slow means of 

 communication in those days, and the legal steps necessary to be 

 taken in the mother country, the university was not formally established 

 until 1553, or eighty-three years before Harvard College was opened. 

 The great event of setting on foot the university came under the 

 enlightened rule of the second viceroy, Don Luis de Velasco, who 

 did so many great things for Spain's new dependency. 



Later on, in 1573, there were founded in Mexico the colleges of 

 San Gregorio and San Ildefonso, the latter still open, but modernized 

 into the national preparatory school, a really great institution in that 

 city of many schools. A few years later, long before the i;th century 

 had dawned, came the founding of two more colleges and a divinity 

 school, so that in the first sixty-five years of Spain's control in Mexico 

 no less than seven seats of the higher learning had been established on 

 secure foundations. 



No wonder that Mexico's capital became known as the Athens of 

 the new world, producing men of great learning, such as Don Juan 

 Ruiz de Alarcon and such notably erudite women as Juana Inez de la 

 Cruz. The extensive library of " Americana," belonging to Don Jose de 

 Agreda, of that city, containing over 4000 books, many of them invalu- 

 able, attests the literary, antiquarian, scientific and artistic activity of 

 the Spaniards who planted there in a short space of time so much of 

 learning and such vast institutions dedicated to the instruction in all 

 the higher branches of knowledge. 



At the outset the University of Mexico gave instruction only in 

 mathematics, Latin and the arts. Medicine and surgery were not 

 esteemed highly during the middle ages, and it was not until long after 

 the revival of learning in the Renaissance that the physician came to 

 be considered as a true man of science. So it is not to be marvelled 

 at that the University of Mexico waited until 1578 to establish a chair 

 of medicine the first in the new world discovered by Columbus. The 

 first chair of medicine was a morning class, and a single professor 

 carried his students through a four years' course unaided. In 1599, a 

 second medical professorship was added ; in 1661, anatomy and surgery 



