Manuel Carpio

Manuel Carpio was a prominent Mexican intellectual of the 19th century and a pioneer of scientific medicine in Mexico. He was a poet, theologian, physician, and politician, as well as a distinguished member of the Academy of Letrán and the National Academy of San Carlos of Mexico. His personality and work were characterized by his deep religious and humanist convictions, making love and charity the rule of his life. He studied Latin, philosophy, and theology at the Conciliar Seminary in Puebla, where he developed a passion for reading Greek and Roman classics, religious books, and ancient history. He completed his medical studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1832. He translated Aphorisms and Prognostics by Hippocrates and was a teacher, writer, and legislator. He was part of the Legislature of Veracruz and a representative in the Congress of the Union. He was briefly the President of the Chamber of Deputies. Although Carpio was known for his poetry, his first poems were not published until 1849. Carpio's inspiration for his poetry was the Bible, with most of his poems being either religious or historical. He was a classicist who often used Romanticism. His poems include Mexico, El Popocatépetl, Belshazzar's Feast, The Witch of Endor, The Annunciation, The Virgin at the Foot of the Cross, and Napoleon in the Red Sea. Carpio wrote the earliest known literary depiction of the ghost La Llorona as a poem in 1849. He died in Mexico City on February 11, 1860.