Orta, Garcia d' [da Orta]

1. Dates

Born: Castelo de Vide, Portugal, c. 1500

Died: Goa, India, c. 1568

Dateinfo: Both Dates Uncertain

Lifespan: 68

2. Father

Occupation: Merchant

No information on financial status.

3. Nationality

Birth: Portugal

Career: Portuguese colonial society

Death: Portuguese colonial society

4. Education

Schooling: Salamanca, Alcala; M.D.

Studied at Salamanca and Alcala. I assume the equivalent of a B.A. He was licensed as soon as he returned to Portugal; thus I assume some advanced medical degree.

5. Religion

Affiliation: Jew, Catholic

Parents were Jews who fled Spain in 1492, then converted in Portugal in order not to be forced to flee a second time. He conformed externally to Catholicism.

6. Scientific Disciplines

Primary: Botany, Pharmacology

Subordinate: Medicine (Tropical Medicine)

7. Means of Support

Primary: Medical Practice, Patronage

Secondary: Academic Position

Licensed in 1526, he began to practice and moved at once to Lisbon. There he became (this is a title, not a position) a physican to the King.

1530, appointed to lecture on natural philosophy in Univ. of Lisbon.

1534, sailed to Goa as personal physician to M.A. de Sousa, Viceroy of India. Ficalho is definite that Orta was in Sousa's service and thinks he had been under his protection for some time, that perhaps the Sousa family financed his university education and arranged for the chair in Lisbon. If I comprehended, Orta dedicated his Coloquias to Sousa.

1534-8. Travelled extensively along the coast of India, attending to Sousa during his campaigns of conquest. 1538, settled in Goa, where he continued to serve as physician to the Viceroys and in general practice--clearly very prosperous.

When Sousa returned to Portugal, Orta stayed on in Goa for the rest of his life. It is clear that Goa was his escape from persecution as a Jew. He brought much of his family there. After his death at least one sister was burned in an auto-da-fe and Orta's remains were burned.

1563, published in Goa Coloquias dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da India, a pioneering work on the medicinal materials of southeast Asia and on its plants. Also pioneering on Indian diseases unknown to European medicine.

8. Patronage

Type: Aristocracy

See above.

9. Technological Involvement

Types: Medical Practice, Pharmacology

10. Scientific Societies

Memberships: None

Sources

1. Grande enciclopedia portuguesa e brasileira.
2. Harry Friedenwald, The Jews and Medicine, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1944), 2, 435-45. M. Ferreira de Mira, Historia da medicina portuguesa, pp. 139-43.
3. Chincilla, Historia de la medicina española, 1, 468-70.
4. Conde de Ficalho, Garcia da Orta e o seu tempo, (Lisbon, 1886).
5. This is the fundamental source.

Not Available and Not Consulted

1. A. de Silva Carvalho, Garcia d'Orta, 1934. Whether a separate publication or not, he also published this in Revista da Universidad de Coimbra, 12 (1934).
2. The journal Garcia de Orta (sic) devoted an issue, vol. 10, #4, (1963) to him.
3. Luis de Pina, Os portugueses e a exploracao cientifica do ultramar in Alta cultura colonial, (Lisbon, 1936).

Compiled by:

Richard S. Westfall

Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Indiana University

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