Garcia de Orta

Garcia de Orta (1501 to 1568) was a Portuguese physician, herbalist and naturalist who worked mainly in Goa and Bombay in Portuguese India. Born in Castelo de Vide to a family of Spanish Jews who had taken refuge in Portugal, he studied medicine, arts and philosophy at the universities of Alcalá de Henares and Salamanca, practised in Lisbon, became a royal physician to John III of Portugal and sailed for India in 1534. He is regarded as a pioneer of tropical medicine, pharmacognosy and ethnobotany because he used an experimental approach to identify and use herbal medicines rather than relying completely on received knowledge. His most famous work, the Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India, published in 1563, is the earliest treatise on the medicinal and economic plants of India, and Carolus Clusius translated it into Latin as a standard reference text. After his death the Goa Inquisition had his remains exhumed and burnt.