1
1 ACOSTA, Cristóbal. Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias Orientales con sus plantas debuxadas al biuo. Burgos: Martin de Victoria, 1578 A pioneering work on East and West Indian plants First edition of this groundbreaking work by the Portuguese pioneer in the study of pharmaceutical uses of oriental plants; scarce in commerce. Acosta’s work was part of “a new trend in books on the natural world, highly descriptive, specialized, and practical, coexisting with the works of a new generation of scientists trained in the reformed university milieu of the sixteenth century” (Ishikawa, p. 149). As such, it offers fascinating insights into Renaissance therapeutics. Acosta ( c .1525–1594) was a Portuguese physician, naturalist, and botanist. In the years before 1550 he served in the military in maritime Asia and it was during this tour that he met the Portuguese physician, Garcia da Orta (1501–1568) in Goa. Orta, himself an author, published Coloquios dos simples, a Drogas he cousas medicinais da India in 1563, describing in dialogue form several vegetable products of the East and their
1
medical uses: in effect this was the first European account of Indian materia medica and tropical medicine. Acosta returned to India in 1568, just months after Orta’s death and, while there served as a physician at the royal hospital in Cochin and collected botanical specimens along India’s west coast. Upon his return from India, Acosta moved to Burgos, becoming a municipal physician. It was there that he wrote the present work, which, though an adaptation of Orta’s work, “rivalled Orta’s book in authority and influence” and differed “markedly in form, arrangement, and subject matter” (Lach, p. 437). Acosta adopted a “straightforward, concise, and systematic description of the plants, an approach
more acceptable to botanists”, moving away from Orta’s colloquial form (ibid.). His recension “clearly surpasses the earlier work in its systematic, first-hand observations of both East and West Indian plants and its illustrations after Acosta’s own accurate drawings” (Norman), adding 20 full-page woodcuts and 14 botanical species for medical use. Among the Asian plants described are ginger, cinnamon, tamarind, pepper, nutmeg, and cardamom. He classifies the plants in terms of their morphological features, such as leaf characteristics, fruit types, or flower structures, along with details on their local environments and uses. The splendid woodcuts accompanying the text are some of the first depictions of Indian flora printed
2
SUMMER 2022
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter maker