Garcia da Orta in Goa: pioneering tropical medicine.
1991; BMJ; Volume: 303; Issue: 6817 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1136/bmj.303.6817.1593
ISSN0959-8138
Autores Tópico(s)Colonialism, slavery, and trade
ResumoCholera made an impressive reappearance this year in South America, continuing a pandemic that started 30 years ago in Indonesia and then passed through Asia, the Middle East, southern Europe, Africa, and Japan.'This dramatic comeback makes it appropriate to com- memorate the man who published the first "modem" description of severe "Asian" cholera.Four and a quarter centuries ago, in 1563, Garcia da Orta's Coloquios dos simples e drogas e cousas medicinais da India was printed in Goa, the Portuguese colony on the west coast of India.It was the third book ever printed in Asia, and the first on a non-religious subject.It was the earliest foundation for the science of tropical medicine and materia medica, as taught in European universities, where it continued to be used as an authoritative text for the next two or three centuries, and it long predated the important therapeutic advances made by illustrious members of the British and French colonial medical services.Da Orta practised medicine and studied pharma- cognosy in Goa continuously from 1534 until his death there in 1568.Portugal was then at the height of its sea power and colonial glory, and Goa was its eastern jewel, a splendid city basking in the centre of east-west trade (fig 1).Garcia da Orta's parents were "new Christians" of Jewish origin, who had fled the Spanish Inquisition to the town of Castelo de Vide in Portugal.Young Garcia studied arts, philosophy, and medicine at the Spanish universities of Salamanca and Alcala de Henares from 1515 to 1523.After spending the years 1526 to 1534 on the faculty of Lisbon University he made an adven- turous career move, sailing for Goa in March 1534 in a fleet commanded by Martin Affonso de Sousa, who later (1542-5) became governor general of Portuguese Asia.Among his patients da Orta had a succession of governors and viceroys of Goa, one of whom granted him a long lease on the island of Bombay, which was then a Portuguese possession amounting to little more than a fishing village.Da Orta developed and main- FIG 1 -Goa in the sixteenth century, a bustling trading city and outpost ofPortuguese power
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