Georg Joseph Kamel

Georg Joseph Kamel, who lived from 1661 to 1706, was a Jesuit missionary, pharmacist and naturalist, known for producing the first comprehensive accounts of Philippine flora and fauna and for introducing Philippine nature to the European learned world. Born in Brno in Moravia, he joined the Jesuits as a lay brother in 1682, worked as a pharmacist at Jindřichův Hradec and Krummau and was sent to the Philippines in 1687, reaching Manila in 1688. There he established the pharmacy of the Jesuit college and a botanical garden known for rare and medicinal plants, and he treated the poor free of charge. He corresponded with learned men in Europe and Asia, including John Ray and James Petiver of the Royal Society. His descriptions of Philippine herbs, shrubs and trees appeared as a 96-page appendix to the third volume of Ray's Historia Plantarum in 1704, and his other treatises were published in the Philosophical Transactions. He was the first to acquaint Europe with species such as the tarsier, the colugo and the St Ignatius bean, a source of strychnine, and he died at the age of 45.