Medicine, Trade and Empire exemplifies the most recent scholarship on science and medicine in the service of empire. The collection of essays produced by experts from across the world provides a global context for the life and work of Garcia de Orta, as well as new methodological approaches to the formation, dissemination, and long-term influence of his work, the Colloquies.
Jon Arrizabalaga explores Garcia de Orta’s Jewish roots and places his career, and that of his extended family, within the context of the second Sephardic Diaspora from the Iberian Peninsula. Orta’s Jewish roots were completely ignored in nationalist historiography until some sixty years ago. His Jewish ancestry, however, like that of many of the great Iberian physicians, provided networks for professional success as well as an environment of intolerance. António Manuel Lopes Andrade’s chapter further engages the Jewish connection. He compares Orta’s life and work with that of a contemporary, Amato Lusitano. Orta and Lusitano shared a deep interest in materia medica as well as Jewish ancestry. Lopes Andrade argues convincingly that even though the two men walked the same intellectual path, fear of persecution and a climate of intolerance in Europe informed Orta’s decision to demonstrate only limited knowledge of Lusitano’s work.
Michael Pearson presents Garcia de Orta as a cosmopolitan scholar living in a climate of increasing intolerance in Goa. As a center of exchange among various networks throughout the Indian Ocean, Goa provided Orta with a diverse network of peoples and places through which he collected medicine and other commodities. Those exchanges allowed Garcia de Orta to secure the reliability of the knowledge he was presenting, according to Hugh Cagle. Verifying facts of knowledge through exchanges among many different peoples and communities was crucial to his endeavor. As Cagle argues, Orta’s methodological eclecticism (his own experience, texts by ancient and modern authors, and the testimony of others) allowed him to ensure the veracity of knowledge claims and was his most innovative contribution to natural history and medicine. Harold Cook furthers this approach to Orta’s lifework, arguing that he was a truly revolutionary figure in the fields of medicine and natural history. Through an engaging analysis of the place of chinaroot in the Colloquies, Cook argues that Orta was clearly moving away from Galenism and toward methods associated with iatrochemistry.
Ines G. Županov explores Orta’s presentation of the Colloquies as a dialogue. While this was not the typical genre for medico-botanical texts in sixteenth-century Europe, Orta chose to place his work directly within the broader culture of European humanism at the very moment that Counter-Reformation forces in Europe and Portuguese India closely monitored all publications. Yet the text abounds with historical and political digressions and even veiled criticism of the Holy Office. Županov argues that it was “only in a dialogue and put into the mouth of a ‘fictional’ character” that Orta could get away with such commentary in a medico-botanical text (55).
Analyses of the dialogic format continue in the contributions of Inês de Ornellas de Castro and Isabel Soler and Juan Pimentel respectively. Ornellas de Castro explores the didactic virtues of the text in Orta’s choice of a number of therapeutic and alimentary uses of the flora and fauna of the Portuguese Indies. She suggests, intriguingly, that some of the culinary habits presented in the text reveal traces of Jewish ritual practices. Soler and Pimentel focus their attention on Orta’s repudiation of errors throughout the Colloquies. Here, the dialogic format was ideally suited to the essential unpacking of errors in knowledge from the origins of Eastern plants to their proper identification. Orta’s expertise in ancient and contemporary materia medica is demonstrated through a comparative framework that highlights his textual and experiential mastery.
Orta’s influence was far-reaching. Egmond explores the Dutch connection, arguing that Carolus Clusius, in effect, appropriated the text and reconstituted it as a work of European botanical science through years of editions, corrections, and additions to the original work. Through careful textual analysis Egmond reveals much about the emergence of botanical science in Europe and the uneven exchange of knowledge within empire. José Pardo Tomás explores Orta’s work and influence in Spain. He places the Colloquies within the growing interest of both Crown and intellectuals in stimulating trade and the exchange of knowledge from America. Spanish experts like Monardes and Fragoso sought plausible substitutions for Eastern materia medica and fueled commercial exploitation of the Americas. Timothy Walker concludes that the business of empire had long-term implications throughout the Portuguese sphere in the field of medicine. Orta helped create a culturally blended, hybridized medical culture that thrived for centuries. Orta’s experiential cross-cultural inquiries fully informed the Colloquies, and he embraced the values of experimentation and cultural adoption. Those practices, techniques, and values can be seen throughout the Lusophone world for more than two centuries. The volume is rich in content, yet contributes most significantly to methodological and historiographic trends in the field. The contributions are of the highest caliber and it is a must read for anyone interested in the culture of empire.
