page_title: Garcia de Orta
section_title: Work
hierarchical_section_title: Garcia de Orta / Work
caption_attribution_description: Cover of book by Garcia da Orta (1574) Aromatvm, et simplicivm aliqvot medicamentorvm apvd indos nascentivm historia: Primùm quidem Lusitanica lingua per Dialogos conscripta, / D. Garçia ab Horto, Proregis Indiae Medico, auctore. Nunc verò Latino sermone in Epitomen contracta, &amp; iconibus ad viuum expressis, locupletioribusq[ue] annotatiunculis illustrata à Carolo Clvsio Atrebate
context_page_description: Garcia de Orta was a Portuguese Renaissance Sephardi Jewish physician, herbalist and naturalist. He was a pioneer of tropical medicine, pharmacognosy and ethnobotany, working mainly in Goa, then a Portuguese overseas territory. Garcia de Orta used an experimental approach to the identification and use of herbal medicines rather than the traditional approach of using received knowledge. His magnum opus was a book on the simples and drugs published in 1563 Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India, the earliest treatise on the medicinal and economic plants of India. Carolus Clusius translated it into Latin which was widely used as a standard reference text on medicinal plants. Garcia de Orta died before the Inquisition began in Goa but in 1569 his sister was burnt at the stake for being a secret Jew and based on her confession his remains were later exhumed and burnt along with an effigy. Memorials recognizing his contributions have been built both in Portugal and India.
context_section_description: Garcia de Orta's busy practice evidently prevented him from travelling much beyond the west coast of India, but in the busy market and trading hub of Goa he met spice merchants, traders and physicians from many parts of southern Asia and the Indian Ocean coasts. He was confident in Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, Latin, Greek and Arabic (he did not know Sanskrit); his work shows that he gathered considerable knowledge from traditional medicine practitioners from several regions of India. Correspondents and agents sent him seeds and plants; he also traded in spices, drugs and precious stones. He evidently kept a laboratory and botanical garden. De Orta was influenced by Yunnani medicine as well as Ayurveda, although quoting Galen, al-Rhazi and Ibn-Sina more often. He tended to use European approaches in medicine and only when they failed did he make use of local methods.
  His remarkable knowledge of Eastern spices and drugs is revealed in his only known work, Colóquios dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da Índia ("Conversations on the simples, drugs and medicinal substances of India"), the first edition of which was published at Goa in 1563. This book deals with a series of substances, many of them unknown or the subject of confusion and misinformation in Europe at this period. For instance, prior to his publication, tamarind was thought to come from a palm tree. He also noted many details on plants and their propagation. He was the first European to describe the symptoms of several Asiatic tropical diseases, notably cholera; he performed an autopsy on a cholera victim, the first recorded autopsy in India. Garcia de Orta reveals in his writings an unusual independence in face of the usually revered texts of ancient authorities, Greek, Latin and Arabic. The Coloquios has 59 chapters and it was written in the style of a dialogue between da Orta and a traditional doctor, Ruano.  Using a dialogue form was a common literary practice when dealing with the tensions between established and new forms of knowledge. Orta's work questions assumptions made in the past with alternative hypotheses to the ideas from Ibn-Sina and Averroes. His scientific method has been suggested to be a combination of empiricism and hypothesism.
  Da Orta critiqued the work of Leonhart Fuchs. Through his character he commented that Fuchs "...knew little of physic, and still less of things to save his soul, being a heretic condemned for Lutheranism. His books were put in the condemned catalogue" and "though medicine is not the science of the Christian religion, still I abhor the author".
  In one place he points out that the Portuguese traders took little interest in acquiring knowledge:
  The Portuguese, who navigate over a greater part of the world only procure a knowledge of how best to dispose of that merchandise of what they bring here and what they shall take back. They are not desirous of knowing anything about the things in the countries they visit. If they know a product they do not learn from what tree it comes, and if they see it they do not compare it with one of our Indian trees, nor ask about its fruit or what it is like.
  The printing press was introduced into Goa in 1556. The printer for Garcia is thought to have been João de Endem who began with Joao Quinquenio de Campania and continued after him. The rare first edition was full of typographical errors and was only the fifth European book ever printed in Goa and among the first few from India. The errata, probably the longest in printing history, ran to twenty pages and end with a statement that the list was probably incomplete. The English translation by Clements Markham included illustrations of some of the Indian plants by Cristóvão da Costa. Markham considered da Costa's work published in Spanish in 1578, Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias orientales ("Treatise of the drugs and medicines of the East Indies") to be largely based on that of de Orta but some others have pointed out significant differences.
  Garcia's travels to Portuguese Ceylon (Jaffna) on campaigns with Martim 
caption: Cover of Clusius' 1574 Latin translation.
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