Garcia de Orta

Garcia de Orta was a renaissance portuguese medical doctor and naturalist. He was the pioneer of Tropical Medicine.

His Life

He was born in Castelo de Vide in 1501, the son of Fernando (Isaac) da Orta, a merchant, and Leonor Gomes. He died in 1568 (presumed dates). His parents were spanish marranos (jewish converts or crypto-jews) who had taken refuge, as many others did, in Portugal at the time of the great expulsion of the spanish jews by the Reyes Catolicos Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in 1492.

He studied Medicine, Art and Natural Philosophy at the Universities of Alcalá de Henares and Salamanca in Spain. He returned to Portugal in 1523 after graduating and practiced Medicine first in his hometown, then in Lisbon. There, he befriended the great mathematician Pedro Nunes. As a well known clinician, he ascended to the position of Royal Physician to the King of Portugal, John II of Portugal. He was appointed Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Coimbra in 1530.

However fearing that the portuguese Inquisition was moving against him, against which even the King was often impotent, he departed to India in 1534 as Chief Physician aboard the armada of the Vice-Roy Martim Afonso Sousa.

In India, he first worked in the capital Goa as Chief Physician. There, he befriended the Poet Luis Váz de Camões, who would become Portugal's national poet. Soon aftwards, thanks to his service to the Vice-Roy, he was granted the Foro or Lordship of the island and town of Mumbai(Bombay), then a part of portuguese India. There, he established himself in his estate where he built his botanical garden, library and museum. He acquired wealth as a merchant of rare medicines and herbs.

He married a rich older woman, Brianda de Solis, in 1543 but the marriage soon failed.

In 1565, the Inquisition was introduced to the Indian Vice-Kingdom and a Tribunal was opened in Goa. Active persecution against jews, crypto-jews and new christians began. Orta's sister Catarina was condemned of Judaism and burned at the stake in an Auto de Fé in Goa in 1568 or 1569.

Orta died in 1568 in Goa of natural causes. In 1580, post-mortem, he was judged and condemned for "the crime of Judaism", and his bones were exumed from Goa's Cathedral and burned in the practice of posthumous execution. His books were also censured and burnt.

His Work

Garcia de Orta was a true Man of the Renaissance, fluent in many languages (portuguese, spanish, hebrew, latin, greek, arabic), and in many sciences. He reveals in his commentaries a – rare at the time – lack of awe before the writings of the ancient authorities. As he put it in his famous book, "it was enough to see well in order to do good science."

His greatest scientific contributions came as a result of his years living in India. He was the first European to describe asiatic tropical diseases and to catalogue many asiatic medicinal herbs. He also discussed medical matters with and learned from Arab, Persian and Hindu physicians. He performed the first autopsy in India on a man who died of cholera, the first scientifically documented case of this disease.

He had a garden and museum were he studied and cultivated rare plants from all over the Indian Ocean and China, as well as some of European origin. The information he gathered was recorded in his book Colóquios dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da Índia e assi dalguas frutas achadas nella onde se tratam alguas cousas boas pera saber ("Conversations on simple drugs and medicinal matters from India and also of some fruits found there; and on some matters good to know") which was published in Goa in 1563. The book included the first published verses by his friend, poet Luís de Camões (Portugal's National Poet), who was instrumental in persuading the Vice-Roy to authorise and patronize it.

The book was soon recognized across Europe and translations in Latin (then the scientific lingua-franca) and other languages were made, introducing many drugs to western medicine unknown until then.

Today, Garcia de Orta's book is still valued by modern pharmaceutical researchers because some of the herbs described have not yet been identified (presumably because they are very rare) and could contain useful substances still unknown to science.