Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India

"Colóquios dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da Índia e assi dalgũas frutas achadas nella onde se tratam algũas cousas tocantes a medicina, pratica, e outras cousas boas pera saber" ("Conversations on the simples, drugs and materia medica of India and also on some fruits found there, in which some matters relevant to medicine, practice, and other matters good to know are discussed") is a work of great originality published in Goa on 10 April 1563 by Garcia de Orta, a Portuguese Jewish physician and naturalist, a pioneer of tropical medicine.
Outline of the "Colóquios".
Garcia de Orta's work is in dialogue format. It consists of a series of 57 conversations between Garcia de Orta and an imaginary colleague, Ruano, who is visiting India and wishes to know more about its drugs, spices and other natural products. Occasional participants in the dialogue are apparently real people:
In general the drugs are considered in alphabetical order, but with exceptions. Each of the substances that comes up for discussion is dealt with fairly systematically: its identification and names in earlier texts, its source, its presence in trade, its medical and other uses. Many case histories are mentioned. The discussion of Asiatic cholera is so complete and circumstantial that it constitutes a classic of clinical description.
Digressions, more or less relevant, deal with Indian politics, the significance of China, the rivalries between Portugal and Spain in the Spice Islands. There are anecdotes about elephants, cobras, and mongoose.
Contents of the "Colóquios".
This listing of contents gives the foliation of the first edition, which generally corresponds with that of the 1872 reprint.
Appendix part 1. "Do betre…", Betel (pages 37a to 37k in 1872 reprint)
Appendix part 2, with corrections to the text (pages 227r to 230r in 1872 reprint)
Authorities cited.
"Don't try and frighten me with Diocorides or Galen," Garcia de Orta says to Ruano, "because I am only going to say what I know to be true." Though unusually ready to differ from earlier authorities on the basis of his own observations, Garcia was well read in the classics of medicine. As a sample, the following authors (listed here in the spellings preferred by Garcia) are regularly cited in the first 80 folia of the "Colóquios":
Garcia also occasionally quotes "Aristotele, Averroe, Plutarco, Valerio Probo, Sepulveda, Francisco de Tamara, Vartamano, Vesalio"; also "Autuario", a medieval Greek author known to him through a Latin translation by Ruelio.
Garcia felt able to differ from these authorities, as he very frequently does, because he was a long way from Europe. "If I was in Spain [the term "Spain", derived from "Hispania", was in his time the geographical designation for the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula that includes Portugal] I wouldn't dare to say anything against Galen and the Greeks;" this remark has been seen as the real key to the "Colóquios".
The original edition of the "Colóquios".
Goa was by no means a major publishing centre, although the first printing press in India was introduced there in 1556; in the words of historian Charles Ralph Boxer, the original edition of the "Colóquios" "probably contains more typographical errors than any other book ever issued from a printing-press". The errata consisted of twenty pages and noted that it was probably incomplete. Garcia's printer is thought to have been João de Endem who began his career with Joao Quinquenio de Campania.
The original publication states very carefully the extent of its official backing. The title page carries the approval of the Viceroy and of the local Inquisitor "Alexos Diaz Falcam". The book opens with several commendatory letters and prefaces. Among these preliminaries, the one that is of most interest now is a poem, the first published verses by Garcia's friend Luís de Camões, now recognised as Portugal's national poet.
Many of the printing errors and authorial oversights are silently corrected in the 1872 reprint, which, although it follows the original page-for-page, is not a facsimile.
Reception of the "Colóquios".
Garcia de Orta was the first European to catalogue Indian medicinal herbs in their native habitat. His book was rapidly acknowledged as indispensable by scientists across Europe. Translations in Latin (then the scientific lingua franca) and other languages were made. The Latin translation, a slight abridgement dropping the dialogue format, but adding woodcut illustrations and editorial commentary, was by Charles de l'Écluse (Carolus Clusius). Clusius acquired his copy of the "Colóquios" at Lisbon on 28 December 1564, and evidently continued to work on it all his life. In its final (fifth) edition, his translation forms a part of his great collaborative work, "Exoticorum libri decem" (1605).
Unluckily for the fame of Garcia da Orta's book, large parts of it were included with minimal acknowledgement in a similar work published in Spanish in 1578 by Cristóbal Acosta, "Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias orientales" ("Treatise of the drugs and medicines of the East Indies"). Da Costa's work was widely translated into vernacular languages and eventually lessened the fame of Garcia de Orta except among the few who were aware of the latter's originality.
There is an English translation of the "Colóquios" by Sir Clements Markham (1913) which included an introductory biography.