Background
Cristobal Acosta was born around 1525 somewhere in Africa, possibly in Boa Ventura, Santo Antáo, Cape Verde Islands. The exact place and date of his birth remain unknown for historians.
Cristobal Acosta
Cristobal Acosta, 1578 title page. Library of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon.
Cristobal Acosta Aromatum & medicamentorum in Orientali India.
An illustration from the book by Cristobal Acosta.
An illustration from the book by Cristobal Acosta.
Cristobal Acosta, 1578.
Cristobal Acosta, 1578 title page. Library of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon.
Cristobal Acosta Aromatum & medicamentorum in Orientali India.
An illustration from the book by Cristobal Acosta.
An illustration from the book by Cristobal Acosta.
Tomé Pires,1465?–1524 or 1540, Portuguese apothecary from Lisbon.
Garcia de Orta, 1501? – 1568, Portuguese Renaissance Sephardi Jewish physician, herbalist and naturalist.
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(Tratado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias Orientale...)
Tratado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, con las plantas dibujadas en vivo por Cristobal Acosta, medico y cirujano que las vio ocularmente. Edción Facsimilar
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Doctor historian Pharmacology author
Cristobal Acosta was born around 1525 somewhere in Africa, possibly in Boa Ventura, Santo Antáo, Cape Verde Islands. The exact place and date of his birth remain unknown for historians.
Born Christovao da Costa - according to Portuguese usage - Acosta moved to Lisbon and lived in Setúbal and Peniche, but his excellent Spanish and broad education indicate that he studied arts and medicine, most probably in Salamanca.
After Acosta had studied arts and medicine in Salamanca, he went to the East Indies before 1550 as a soldier and visited Persia, India, Malaya, and perhaps China. There is record of his actions against the Arabs in Hormuz; against the Abexins near Daman, where he lost two horses in battle; and on the Malabar Coast, where he was taken prisoner on the way to Bengal; and of his meetings in Goa with Garcia d’Orta.
Acosta returned to Portugal but soon rejoined his former captain, Luiz de Ataide, who had been appointed viceroy of India, and landed at Goa in October 1568, a few months after the death of Garcia d’Orta.
In 1569 he was appointed physician to the Royal Hospital in Cochin, but by 1571 he was collecting botanical specimens in Tanor, Cranganor, and other parts of India. Luiz de Ataide ended his term of office in 1572, and Acosta sailed from Cochin back to Lisbon via the Cape of Good Hope. He practiced medicine in Burgos and was that city’s physician and surgeon from 1576 to 1587. After his wife died, he retired to the hermitage of La Peña de Tharsis, which was probably where he died around 1594.
Acosta is most noted for his books, such as Acosta’s Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias orientales, which was written in a fluid and concise style. It offers systematic, firsthand observations of the Oriental drugs and is illustrated by woodcuts made from his own accurate drawings. This book clearly surpasses that of d’Orta, whose contributions Acosta readily acknowledges. His Tratado in loor de las mujeres followed Boccaccio’s work but was not influenced by Espinosa’s Dialogo en laude de las mugeres (1580). His other printed work, Tratado en contra y pro de la vida solitaria, incorporated two other independent treatises, Tratado de la religión y religioso and Collación á los mohateros, usureros, aparceros, tratantes y seducadores, both moral works. In all, Acosta wrote thirteen works, but the manuscripts of his Discurso del viaje á las Indias orientales y lo que se navega en aquellos mares, Tres diálogos teriacales, and above all his great Tratado de las yerbas, plantas, frutas y animales, asi terrenos como aquatiles que en aquellas partes y en la Persia y en la China hay, no dibujadas al natural hasta agora, are not extant.
(Tratado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias Orientale...)
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Portuguese apothecary from Lisbon who spent 1512 to 1515 in Malacca immediately after the Portuguese conquest, at a time when Europeans were only first arriving in Southeast Asia. After his arduous experiences in India and the East Indies, he headed the first official embassy from a European nation in China (Portugal, to the Chinese Zhengde Emperor, during the Ming dynasty), where he died.
Garcia de Orta (or Garcia d'Orta) (1501? – 1568) 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.
