Cristóbal Acosta

Cristóbal Acosta, in Portuguese Cristóvão da Costa, Latinized as Christophorus Acosta Africanus (about 1525 to about 1594), was a Portuguese doctor and natural historian, a pioneer in the study of Asian plants and their use in medicine. His birthplace is unknown, probably somewhere in Portuguese Africa, as he calls himself African. He went to the East Indies in 1550 as a soldier, was held captive in Bengal, and in 1568 returned to Goa as personal physician to the viceroy Luís de Ataíde, then served as physician to the royal hospital in Cochin, where he collected botanical specimens. Back in Europe he practised as a surgeon and physician in Burgos from 1576 to 1587. There in 1578 he published, in Spanish, the Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias orientales, with twenty three woodcuts, which drew heavily on Garcia de Orta, was translated into Italian in 1585 and was partly rendered into Latin by Carolus Clusius. It ends with what was probably the first treatise on the Asian elephant printed in Europe. He died in Huelva in 1594.