What did garcia de orta discover

Orta, Garcia de

ORTA, GARCIA DE (c. 1500–1568), Portuguese Marrano scientist and physician. Born in Castelo de Vide, he studied medicine at Salamanca and Alcalá and taught at Lisbon University. Garcia de Orta left for India in 1534. During his long stay in Goa, he served as physician to the Portuguese viceroys and leading Christian dignitaries, as well as the Muslim ruler Burhā n al-Dīn Niẓām al-Mulk. In recognition of his services, the Portuguese viceroy bestowed on him, probably in 1548, the island of *Bombay, then a small fishing village.

Garcia de Orta's great work, Coloquios dos Simples e drogas he Cousas Medicinais da India (Goa, 1563; "Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India" 1913), made him "the first European writer on tropical medicine and a pioneer in pharmacology." This work, written in Portuguese in the form of a dialogue, was approved by the Inquisition and recommended by the official physician of the viceroy, Luiz de Camões. It was hailed as one of the chief cultural achievements of the 16th century, a work which brought the greatest honor to the autho

4 Issues of Best Historiographical Practice: Garcia da Orta’s Colóquios dos simples e drogas e cousas medicinais da India (Goa, 1563) and Their Conflicting Interpretation

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Garcia da Orta (d. 1568), until the 1930s mostly known among botanists and a small group of Portuguese academics, has since become something akin to a cult icon for historians and historians of science interested in a broad variety of issues. These issues include scientific and medical progress, the Portuguese colonial empire, the Inquisition, cross-cultural exchange of knowledge and ethnobotany, to name the themes most often presented. Orta has been hailed as the first European writer on Asian medicinal plants and simple drugs, as well as the first natural historian who privileged observation and experiment over books and thus brought on progress. He has been presented as the first ethnobotanist, as someone, who rejected the “Arabs” and “Brahmanic” medical teaching, while relying predominantly on local “empirical epistemology” brought to him b

Garcia de Orta

Portuguese botanist (1501–1568)

Garcia de Orta (or Garcia d'Orta; 1501–1568) was a Portuguese physician, herbalist, and naturalist, who worked primarily in Goa and Bombay in Portuguese India.

A pioneer of tropical medicine, pharmacognosy, and ethnobotany, Garcia used an experimental approach to the identification and the use of herbal medicines, rather than the older approach of received knowledge.

His most famous work is Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India, a book on simples (herbs used individually and not mixed with others) and drugs. Published in 1563, it is 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.

Although Garcia de Orta did not suffer the Goa Inquisition, his sister Catarina was burnt at the stake in 1569 for being a secret Jew and, based on her confession, his remains were later exhumed and burnt, along with an effigy, at an auto-da-fé.

Memorials recognizing his contributions have been built in bot

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