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127
CHAPTER 5
Tropical Empiricism
Making Medical Knowledge in Colonial Brazil
JÚNIA FERREIRA FURTADO
Medical Books: Paradise Lost
By analyzing several medical treatises written between the sixteenth and
the eighteenth centuries, this paper will discuss the experience that the
authors of these texts accumulated by practicing medicine in colonial
Brazil. What do these empirical medical practices tell us about Brazil
as a colonial society and about the production and communication of
knowledge within the larger Atlantic world? ese medical authors
inaugurated the eld of what would come to be called Tropical Medicine,
concerned as they were not only with knowing the speci cities of diseases
and their local treatments but with how to extend this knowledge about
the various kingdoms of the natural world into other realms as well.1 ey
went to great lengths not only to collect information but to classify and
order the world and its natural elements. eir books discuss the speci c
aspects of diseases that in this period were o en little known. Many
of these diseases were tropical in origin, and these authors attempted
to use local products, including plants, animals, and minerals, in their
treatments. Collectively, the medical specimens employed in this practice
were known as materia medica.2
128 • Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
e discovery of the New World put European colonizers into contact
with a new and unknown nature.3 In general, the native populations
were the ones that showed Europeans how to use this natural bounty,
especially in relation to medicinal cures. Empirical gathering and testing
of plants, drugs, and other objects in a tropical environment required
colonizers to enter into material exchange not only with the indigenous
populations but with African slaves as well.4 It was o en the case that
European savants discarded the intellectual framework provided by their
indigenous counterparts. is article sets out to track the vestiges of some
of these forms of knowledge and how knowledge was shared between and
published by Europeans during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Put simply, the practice of colonial empiricism led to abundant encounters
with native knowledge. It is in this sense that empiricism in the Atlantic
(as opposed to within Europe) involved and indeed required extended
interactions with native culture. ese men and their books became
intermediaries between indigenous and European systems of knowledge,
and the cultural encounter between these radically di erent populations
raised unparalleled problems of translation, travel, access, and trust. eir
books also re ected the relationship between the entrepreneurial structure
of the careers of physicians who traveled between Portugal, Holland, and
Brazil and indigenous knowledge and practices (including, signi cantly, the
institution of slavery): a kind of local empiricism in which European and
indigenous knowledge and practice merged before ultimately nding their
way into print within the larger community of intellectuals and savants on
both sides of the Atlantic.5
Taken from this perspective, America becomes a center rather than a
periphery: a place where new ideas are formed and tested. e caravels that
incessantly traversed the seas became caravels of culture, not only because
they carried men and objects that reproduced European values and culture
but because they took back with them to Europe a new perception of the
world that, in turn, made its own mark on the culture of the colonizer.
European scholars placed this new knowledge into a new cognitive
framework whose structure was increasingly based on empiricism and
rationality.6 is analysis thus requires a reassessment of the notions of
center and periphery within the Portuguese empire itself and in relation to
the knowledge systems of Europe and the Americas.
ese transoceanic movements and the expansion of Portugal’s overseas
empire from the eenth to the eighteenth centuries brought with them
an empirical renovation of knowledge that was the result of observations
by sailors, merchants, clerics, administrators, and doctors, among others.
In particular, this new maritime knowledge revolutionized the maritime
Tropical Empiricism • 129
sciences, including the construction of boats and maps. Medical knowledge
increased as well, especially in elds that concerned the pharmacopoeia
and medical botany.7
Maritime voyages to the East and to Brazil unveiled a strange and diversi-
ed nature to the Portuguese. Knowledge gleaned from new elements found
in these exotic environments—the so-called medicinal simples (simple
elements) that, when combined in di erent ways, formed compound
elements—would later transform medicinal practice in Portugal, the East,
and in South America and would force authors to adopt new classi cation
schemes, which in turn stimulated the extensive production of literature
mixing medicine and natural history.8
From an early stage, then, medicine and natural history in Portugal were
characterized both by experimentation and the incorporation of knowledge
from the direct observation of nature. is practice led to the incorporation
of new medicines in treatments, many of which that had been prepared
by including elements found overseas. It was o en the case that the forms
of preparation and their uses were learned through contact with native
populations. Medical knowledge within Portugal and throughout its
overseas dominions was heir to a medieval tradition in Europe that divided
medicine into two separate branches: a learned tradition practiced by doctors
trained in universities and another, more practical tradition carried out by
surgeons, midwives, and barbers (who, among other practices, performed
bloodletting and extracted teeth). Because there were no universities in the
Portuguese colony, all doctors and surgeons were required to pursue their
studies in Europe, even if they had been born in Brazil. More o en than not,
these Luso-Brazilian doctors studied in Coimbra and Évora. Nevertheless,
many were trained abroad, most frequently at the Universities of Alcalá
and Salamanca in Spain and at the University of Paris.9
In the more practical branches of medicine, the tradition of the trade
guilds was already in force. In this system, masters passed on their
accumulated knowledge to their apprentices. Aspiring apprentices in the
area of surgery, for example, had to present a certi cate of at least four
years of apprenticeship with a recognized surgeon before training for an
additional two years with a licensed surgeon. Because of its more practical
character and the empirical apprenticeship it required, the practice of
surgery was considered a lesser art, peripheral to the practice of medicine
and solely performed by the surgeons or barber-surgeons. e Hospital
Real de Todos os Santos, founded in Lisbon in 1492, became an important
center for the study of surgery, and only in the eighteenth century were
courses in this eld created within Portuguese universities.10
130 • Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
As was the case in the rest of Europe, Galenic thinking predominated
within Portuguese universities up until the rst half of the eighteenth
century. Galen’s theories were not necessarily opposed to experimentation,
however. In fact, empiricism was the basis for the formulation of medical
knowledge from ancient times, and many Portuguese books were written
based on descriptions of observations from actual patients and from the
treatments provided them. During the early modern period, increased
medical knowledge required many changes to be made to Galen’s theoretical
framework. Some of these changes were super cial, but others were more
profound. Many Portuguese doctors and surgeons extended their medical
knowledge through the publication of medical treatises. For many of these
doctors, experience overseas was a fundamental component of the renewal
of their medical practice and for the incorporation of new elements to the
pharmacopoeia they used for treating patients.11
From its earliest stages, Portuguese maritime expansion forced early
modern authors to question the ancient belief that the Torrid Zone was
uninhabited. Very much to the contrary, the New World revealed itself to
navigators as a place of paradisiacal qualities, with a mild climate, exuberant
vegetation, and an incredible diversity of animal life. Between the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, many chroniclers of Portuguese colonization in
the Americas consolidated this connection between Brazil and the earthly
paradise. Observations about Brazil’s temperate climate, the land’s fertility,
the diversity and abundance of fauna and ora, and the abundance of natural
wealth frequently dot the narratives and contemporaneous descriptions of
the discovery and subsequent colonization of Portuguese America. is
literature, produced by clerics, travelers, administrative o cers, seamen,
doctors, surgeons, and others remains a crucial source for the study of
nature and medicine in the New World.12
Many well-known Portuguese doctors touted the primacy of empiricism
and practical learning over established knowledge, and their works were
known throughout Europe. For many of these authors, contact with the
oral and faunal diversity of New World nature was essential not only in
transforming the practice of medicine but in overturning the centuries-old
forms of natural classi cation that had been inherited from antiquity and
strongly marked by the in uence of Aristotle, Dioscorides, and Pliny. An
extensive literature came to extol the virtues of Brazilian ora and fauna
and how to use them in medical treatments, and this literature, in turn,
contributed signi cantly to changes in taxonomy. Many names can be cited
to illustrate those Portuguese who rst described Brazil’s medicinal plants
and tropical diseases. Abraão Zacuto Lusitano (1575–1642) inaugurated
the medical bibliography of Brazilian tropical disease; Aleixo de Abreu
Tropical Empiricism • 131
(1568–1630) is considered one of the rst authors on tropical medicine;
Simão Pinheiro Mourão (1618–1685) described many of the same tropical
diseases and scurvy, which he observed in Recife; in 1694, João Ferreira
da Rosa wrote the rst book to describe yellow fever in detail; and Miguel
Dias Pimenta studied a very common disease, the achaque or mal do bicho,
also known as corrupção or maculo, which attacked the large intestine
and sometimes even caused death. eir writings revealed a great deal of
information about animal and plant diversity as well, such as the existence
of jaborandi, tobacco, ipeca, cana stula, and many other medicinal plants
from Brazil.13
Traditionally, the Dutch invasion of Brazil (1624–1649) was considered
to be the period in which the greatest amount of new knowledge about
Brazilian diseases was produced. Likewise, most scholars still insist that
only Dutch authors were capable of producing knowledge that was, at its
base, empirically and experimentally derived from Brazilian sources. is
a rmation has been reinforced by the assertion that, during this period,
the Iberian Peninsula remained entirely cut o from the epistemological
changes taking place throughout the rest of Europe, a characteristic most
frequently blamed on both the oppressive power of the state and the
Inquisition.14
I hope to show, by contrast, that there was a regular and vigorous
exchange of ideas between Portugal and the rest of the European continent
and that this exchange did not only travel in one direction. ough scholars
from many di erent countries throughout Europe were responsible for
the transformations taking place across divergent elds of knowledge,
Portuguese savants—many of whom based their theoretical and practical
experiments on knowledge acquired during voyages overseas and to other
lands, including Brazil—were no less important in this process. is was
especially true in the area of materia medica and natural history, where
knowledge acquired by Portuguese and Spanish agents in the Americas
through the transplantation and acclimatization of new species, and their
classi cation and description was a fundamental part of the transformations
taking place in these elds throughout European culture since the sixteenth
century. Moreover, much of this knowledge was acquired through contact
with native populations of the New World.15
From this perspective, this essay seeks to show that medical and natural
historical knowledge produced during the period of Dutch presence in
Brazil should not be considered as a separate chapter in the larger history
of how European intellectuals sought to understand and classify American
nature. Nor was this scienti c literature based on di erent epistemological
principles than the Luso-Brazilian treatises of this period. Rather, New
132 • Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
World knowledge was continually moving between the Iberian peninsula
and other regions throughout Europe, and books served as crucial vehicles
for this transmission. As we will see, Luso-Brazilian literature itself served a
crucial role in the development of Dutch knowledge about the nature of the
New World: Both schools sought to create a paradisiacal vision of Brazilian
nature through empiricist practices. As if in unison, these texts conjured up
a land without sickness where Indians with robust bodies lived in an almost
timeless splendor. In addition, in the eighteenth century, this literature
came to be produced by a new class of natural historical practitioners: the
barber-surgeons, who thus broke the monopoly over erudite knowledge
enjoyed by doctors and naturalists. It was this group that became the most
innovative contributors to the study of tropical medicine in the Americas
because of their acute observations of the Brazilian world that surrounded
them. eir knowledge was more popular and less academic in nature, but
it was through this knowledge that tropical medicine emerged from the
forests and hinterlands of colonial Brazil.16
Medicine in Dutch Brazil
An important source of information about Brazil was the literature produced
during the Dutch invasion along the colony’s northeastern coast. In 1578, a
dynastic crisis in Portugal caused by the death of King Sebastian in northern
Africa brought the Spanish and Portuguese crowns together, giving rise to
the period known as the Union of the Two Crowns (1580–1640). Owing
to disputes with Spain brought about by battles for their own autonomy,
the United Provinces, who had traditionally been allies of the Portuguese
in the re nement and commercialization of Brazilian sugar for European
markets, chose to support an invasion of the sugar-producing region in
northeastern Brazil. e rst of various invasion attempts, organized this
time by the West Indies Company, occurred in Bahia in 1624. e most
important and longstanding invasion, however, took place in Pernambuco
between 1630 and 1649.17
Many important studies in medicine and natural history in Brazil
were carried out during the government of Count Maurício de Nassau
(1637–44), who served as the representative of the West Indies Company.
Nassau brought with him a group of scholars who were charged with
studying and illustrating Brazilian nature and geography, and the result
of their work under Nassau’s patronage was nothing less than spectacular.
While Portuguese authorities attempted to prevent detailed information
about the region from circulating freely within the public domain for fear
of foreign invasion, nevertheless two signi cant works from this period
Tropical Empiricism • 133
were published under Count of Nassau’s patronage. ese were the History
of deeds recently practiced during eight years in Brazil and in other parts
under the government of the illustrious João Maurício, Prince of Nassau, by
Gaspar Barleo [i.e. Barléu], and the Natural History of Brazil, published in
Amsterdam in 164, by Willem Piso, Georg Marggraf, and Johannes de Laet
(see Figure 5.1). Later, in 1658, Willem Piso also published the Natural and
Medical History of West Indies.18
To understand these authors’ works and the links between the study
of nature in Portugal and in Holland, it is necessary to look back some
years and analyze the formal education of these savants. In 1593, the
French naturalist Charles de L’Écluse, also known as Clusius, settled at
the University of Leyden in Holland. Clusius was a great scholar and an
important commentator on American ora. Having graduated from the
University of Montpellier and a er successful navigations to Portugal,
Spain, and northern Africa, he devoted himself to the study of plants
from the New World and their introduction into European botanical
gardens. He was obsessed by the question of natural classi cation, and
his plant garden, created in Leyden, served as a model for his European
colleagues. Clusius was also responsible for translating into Latin the
most important works of those Portuguese and Spanish naturalists who
devoted themselves to the study of American nature. He translated the
works of various authors whose texts examined the fauna and ora of
both the East and the Americas, including Garcia d’Orta,19 Cristóvão da
Costa,20 and Nicolas Monardes.21 ese treatises proposed new forms
of classi cation and new uses of the materia medica that would serve as
the basis for later studies. Clusius was primarily interested in translating
these texts, and the frequent citations of these works by authors, such as
Piso and Marggraf, demonstrate that Luso-Hispanic knowledge served
as the basis for many investigations into the nature of the New World
and that this knowledge circulated with regularity between Europeans
intellectuals.
In Leyden, Clusius was responsible for awakening an interest among his
students in the natural diversity of the New World. e University of Leyden
thus became an important center for the training of naturalist-doctors who
were also interested in exotic plants. As such, when it came time for Nassau
to recruit the group of scholars who would accompany him to Dutch Brazil
and carry out the survey of local nature and geography, Willem Piso, a
doctor who had graduated from Leyden, was the natural choice. e
invasion of Brazil allowed Dutch scholars direct access to American nature,
and the practical experience they accumulated reformulated many of the
concepts about the subject that were previously in vogue.22
Figure 5.1 e Natural History of Brazil is remarkable for its role in the development
of the natural sciences and, in particular, for South American ethnography. Front
page of Willem Piso, Georg Marggraf, and Johannes Laet, Historia naturalis Brasiliae.
Auspicio et bene cio Illustriss. I. Mauritii Com Nassau. Leiden: Franciscum Hackium/
Amsterdam: Ludovicus Elzevirium, 1648. Reproduced courtesy of (TK).
Tropical Empiricism • 135
e Natural History of Brazil is remarkable for its role in the development
of the natural sciences and of South American ethnography in particular.
Doctor Willem Piso was responsible for many chapters about diseases,
the disposition of air and water, and the topography of Brazil in addition
to many of the chapters that dealt with poisons and their antidotes and
medicinal plants. Marggraf devoted himself to natural history and provided
descriptions, classi cations, and drawings of plants, sh, birds, quadrupeds,
snakes, and insects. He also included some information about astronomy.
Laet wrote an appendix about the Indians. e book, which was edited
by Laet, also included some of his own notes. It provided an image of a
virgin nature untouched by human hands and revealed the same bucolic
and paradisiacal images that the earliest commentators had invented to
describe Brazil. e Natural History compiled information collected by
scholars through many incursions from the coast through the forest and
into the hinterlands. It contained descriptions of the diverse exotic plants
and animals that were constantly brought by the region’s inhabitants for
use in the zoological and botanical gardens and the cabinet of curiosities
that Nassau had built in the new city under construction in the Captaincy
of Pernambuco.23
e book was divided into three parts” One dedicated to medicine,
subdivided into four chapters; another dealt with natural history and
was subdivided into six chapters; and an appendix spoke about Brazilian
Indians. e rst chapter describes the benign quality of Brazilian air, the
pureness and abundance of water, and the pleasant winds and mild climate.
It announces the diversity of fauna and ora that are described in detail in
the chapters that follow, as a salutary climate provided ideal conditions for
a fertile nature. e second chapter treats endemic diseases. Piso noted that
the diseases had very di erent origins and resulted from the combination
of very di erent population groups—Indian, European, and African—that
ended up generating a complex set of ailments. e fourth chapter, which
deals with the poisons and antidotes, was the result of a thorough study of
Indian knowledge on the subject. is knowledge was also shared by slaves
who, quite o en, used these skills either against their masters or against
one another.24
e book also reveals the very limited knowledge base that Europeans
had on the subject. Piso himself recognized that native Brazilians were
extremely skilled in the application of nature, a practice he referred to as
an art of poisons and counter-poisons. What does this acceptance tell us
about the colonial project in Brazil? Does it suggest that this was in some
ways a cooperative venture, rather than the exercise of power imposed onto
Brazilian peoples by Europeans? When we examine Piso’s writings, we nd
136 • Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
on the one hand that Piso seems to suggest that there exist more similarities
between European and indigenous medicine than di erences. On the other
hand, he consistently lambastes the beliefs inherent in indigenous rituals,
including the cures of the witch doctors, which he calls barbarous. at
being said, and despite these prejudices, Piso does not denigrate native
knowledge about American nature because he realizes that they could be
useful to European medicine. From Piso’s perspective, he could see that
native medicine was based on the use of medicinal simples, which required
a profound knowledge of elements of the natural world. However, how
was this knowledge to be appropriated? Piso reveals the methods he used
for this purpose. First, he relied on his own experimentation; second on
information from natives of the land who were not Indians (i.e., Portuguese
and mestizos); and nally, on contact with the Indians themselves. Let us
examine his procedure more closely.25
Dutch savants made various trips along the coast and into the interior of
the Brazilian Northeast, where they were able to collect and sketch native
specimens of local ora and fauna. Many of these objects were taken to the
palace of Mauritz of Nassau, the site of an important cabinet of curiosities,
a zoological space, and a plant garden. ese voyages were fundamental in
carrying out the necessary observations of the natural world.26
Piso recounts as well that the local populations were already familiar
with using native products as medicinal cures. He writes that during
his journeys he was able to observe such customs, especially among the
more rustic populations that lived along the banks of the São Francisco
River. is region, known generically as the sertão, was located far from
the coast and far from urban settlements along the littoral, which forced
its inhabitants to live a largely rural life that owed much to contact with
the indigenous populations. Nevertheless, Piso explains that he o en had
great di culty nding out this information from the locals, as they claimed
that their medical knowledge was secret. Apparently, what was truly at play
were the rivalries between those populations of Portuguese origin and the
Dutch, with whom the former refused to cooperate.
A er encountering so much resistance to getting information out of the
local populations, Piso explains that he had no alternative other than relying
on information from native populations. However, even here the situation
was not easy. More o en than not, the Dutch were in contact with indigenous
tribes that were closer to the coast, had long-standing relationships with
the Portuguese, and had been used for manual labor in the sugar industry.
In general, these populations spoke Tupi and were known as Brazilians
by the Dutch, as they had been acculturated by and remained loyal to
the Portuguese. e indigenous populations that inhabited the interior
Tropical Empiricism • 137
and were less used to dealing with Europeans were generically known
as tapuias, and many of these tribes—especially those in Rio Grande do
Norte and Ceará—were allies of the Dutch. In both cases, Piso encountered
di culties in extracting information from them, and he was obliged to beg
them for assistance, but rarely were his demands satis ed. In general, he
had to rely on his own direct observation of the natives’ methods, whenever
possible. is took place, for example, when he himself fell ill or when he
was able to observe the behavior of a witch doctor; for, according to Piso,
the Indians did not hide the remedies they used in treating ill individuals to
the extent the Portuguese did. e biggest problem for Piso was acquiring
information about poisonous plants; in these circumstances, the natives
were totally in exible. Piso was able to extract information only from some
“Indian sorcerers who had been condemned to death. I begged of them to
provide me with some secrets before they died and, very much against their
will, they did in the end reveal a few of their secrets to me.”27
is rst part of the book ends with a description of the properties and
virtues of medicinal simples. Again, a large amount of the information was
extracted from the Indians, but their systems of knowledge as a unit were
discarded as mere superstitions. It is clear that in recognizing the Indians’
information about nature and its uses, the traditional origin of knowledge
was inverted: European scholars learned from the New World’s rustic
inhabitants. However, empiricism in the colonial context in fact became a
way to extract practical knowledge from natives without embracing their
heathen and superstitious beliefs about nature, magic, and their gods. On
cementing this new knowledge in written language, Europeans converted
it into an erudite framework. ey adopted practical medical techniques
from the indigenous populations, but they insisted on divorcing these
techniques from the natives’ superstitious accounts of why they functioned
the way they did. is process was emblematic of the European colonists’
appropriation of technical knowledge while separating these techniques
from the native systems of thought in which they initially appeared.
e second part of the book, written by Marggraf, was a summary of
Brazilian ora and fauna. is text can be considered the rst natural
history of Brazil and was, until this date, the most complete text written
about a particular region of South America. It is true that this text revised
all previous classi cations regarding the local materia medica, but it did so
by using works that were Iberian in origin. Marggraf cites Garcia d’Orta,
Clusius (Histoire des Plantes), and Nicolas Monardes as the recognized
authorities on American nature, as indeed they were throughout Europe at
the time. In the book, plants and animals no longer appear as wonders of
nature but rather are positioned to re ect a rationalized and natural order
138 • Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
of the world. e proposed classi cation system was a decisive in uence
on Linneaus’s work in the following century, which would de nitively
bury the vision of nature inherited from antiquity, to give place to another,
characterized by rationalization of the natural world. e elements of
nature were grouped into six categories: plants, sh, birds, quadrupeds,
snakes, and insects. is classi catory system, nonetheless, still retained
vestiges of conceptions from classical antiquity. What allows these species
to be classi ed is a synthesis of the relation they established between the
environment in which they lived and their morphological characteristics.
As such, plants are above the ground and are immobile, sh move in water,
birds y in the air, quadrupeds move on the ground on four legs, snakes
move on the ground, and insects y as well, but they are not birds as they
do not have feathers.28
Each one of the entries began with the presentation of the nomenclature
of the simples to be described, followed by the name given by the Indians,
then by the popular name in Portuguese, and ending with the version
proposed in Latin. Each entry gave a detailed description of the element
(vegetal or animal), its morphology and its utility in the medical subject,
and was followed by a minute iconography. In the case of the vegetables,
the picture of the plant was complemented by the picture of the ower, the
fruit, and the seed. e images produced by Marggraf had the objective of
describing the American world and revealing it to the Europeans, but not
only that. is structure was the result of the combination of an investigative
impetus with the spirit of observation and united science and art.
ough many analyses of the Natural History seem to point toward the
progressive demysti cation of the world and an increasing control over
nature, they tend to forget the extent to which Luso-Brazilian literature
was held in the grip of a paradisiacal vision of the New World. e visions
of Brazil that appeared in the book, whether in the images or the text, are
reminiscent of the myth of the terrestrial paradise. Still, a vestige of the idea
of sympathy formulated by Hyppocrates, the interaction of the climate, the
environment, the stars, and the waters ascribed positive virtues to land and
men. As Piso himself asked rhetorically, “[W]ould there be, in the name of
immortal God, something that does not have any utility?”29
e Barber-Surgeons
e expulsion of the Dutch did not put an end to this process of appropria-
tion by which an erudite Europe culture sought to understand American
nature and attempted to use its products as a medical panacea according
to similar theoretical bases and empirical understanding. During the
Tropical Empiricism • 139
eighteenth century, many books were written by Luso-Brazilians on the
basis of direct observation of Brazilian territory. Nevertheless, two novelties
emerged from this later literature. Contrary to what had occurred in the
previous centuries, these eighteenth-century authors of medical treatises
were not medically trained doctors but rather surgeons, or surgeon-barbers
(see Figure 5.2). Second, the geographical center of this new production
was not the sugar-producing coastal region of northeastern Brazil but
rather the more central southeastern region of Brazil, around the territory
of the recently discovered gold mines.30
Why did these surgeon-barbers, products of an educational background
that was more practical than erudite, become the authors of the most
important books on this subject? First of all, these practical men were able
to ally acute observation of the cases they treated with their medical book
learning and thereby produced a mix of popular and erudite knowledge.
Figure 5.2 Medicine in Portugal and its overseas dominions was divided into
two branches: a learned tradition practiced by doctors trained in universities and
another, more practical tradition carried out by surgeons, midwives, barbers (who
performed bloodletting and extracted teeth), pharmacists (who produced medicines),
and “algebrists” or bonesetters (who treated broken bones and muscles). is image
features a surgeon-barber, a midwife and a priest. Ex-voto em louvor de Bom Jesus
de Matosinhos a Rita Angélica da Costa–Acervo Museu do Diamante (Diamantina).
Reproduction courtesy of the Museu do Diamante e Bibiloteca António Torres.
140 • Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
Second, as soon as they arrived in Brazil, they realized that the years of
apprenticeship in the kingdom were not su cient for the practice of the
profession in the region: e diseases were not always the same and neither
were the components of the climate, the air, and the living conditions that
de ned the illnesses and their treatments. ird, through an empirical
approach, they were able to observe the many diseases that attacked the
population and the arsenal of medications that they had. Fourth, that
contradicting the specialization of functions that characterized the practice
of medicine in the Portugal, these Brazilian surgeons made prognostics
and cures, theorized about the diseases, and prescribed medications—all
attributions restricted to doctors. Fi h, they also produced their own
medicines and, in this case, they were able not only to bene t from
traditional medications but very quickly to learn to use local herbs in their
treatments, whose uses they o en learned from the Indians and mestizos.
Sixth, the chronic lack of doctors in the colony led them to write their books,
which were primarily directed not to the elite and erudite but rather to all
inhabitants of the region, although they intended them to be recognized
as well by foreign doctors and especially those from Portugal. e popular
format of these books, and the primary audience toward which these
texts were directed, allowed their authors to write more freely than would
otherwise have been possible: that is, in the form of practical advice for a
home-grown and popular medicine.31
Regarding this more popular and practical medicine, characteristic of
the eighteenth century, three surgeons stand out: Luís Gomes Ferreira,
who wrote the Erário Mineral (Mineral Treasury) (1735);32 João Cardoso
de Miranda, who wrote the Surgical and medical relation, which deals with
and presents specially a new method to cure the scorbutic infection (1741)33
and the Prodigious Lagoon discovered in the bushes of the mines of Sabará
(1749);34 and José Antônio Mendes, author of Government of Mineiros
(1770).35 e little information that exists about the life of these three
surgeons was almost all provided by the authors themselves in their books.
ey were all of Portuguese origin, had been apprenticed in Portugal and,
like many other Portuguese, had come to Brazil in search of the many
possibilities that the New World opened up for them. Some of them were
attracted to Minas Gerais a er the discovery of gold there in the nal decade
of the seventeenth century.
And why did Minas Gerais become the major theater of empirical
medical literature during this period? In the eighteenth century, the
discovery of gold in southeastern Brazil—and in the captaincy of Minas
Gerais, in particular—brought to the region a signi cant population that
combined a central urban nucleus and a rural surrounding (see Figure 5.3).
Tropical Empiricism • 141
As the century advanced, the number of slaves multiplied, and they came in
the end to constitute the vast majority of the population, living under harsh
living and working conditions and lacking in medical assistance. However,
doctors were few and charged exorbitant fees.36
As keen observers of the reality that surrounded them, the three surgeons
collected knowledge necessary to correctly diagnose the diseases, provide
adequate treatment, and to e ect many cures. ey understood that the
speci city of the region’s diseases required di erent treatments from the
Figure 5.3 e Dutch invasion of Brazil (1624–49) was a period in which a great
amount of new knowledge about Brazilian diseases was produced. In the eighteenth
century, the discovery of gold in southeastern Brazil—and in the captaincy of Minas
Gerais, in particular—produced a signi cant population whose illnesses were studied
in eighteenth-century medical treatises. Map of Brazil with Minas Gerais and area of
the Dutch invasion.
Minas Gerais state today
Limits of Minas Gerais captaincy
in the eighteenth century
Approximate area of Dutch invasion
0200 400 600 800 1000
Miles
São Paulo
Rio de Janeiro
São
Francisco
Salvador
Recife
••
•
•
142 • Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
ones they knew and attempted therefore to add local herbs and products
to the kingdom’s pharmacopoeia. Many of them were already known
and used by the region’s dwellers. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda has shown
that the knowledge of almost all of these products was transmitted to the
bandeirantes37 from São Paulo by the Indians, and these bandeirantes were
responsible for the exploration of the interior of Brazil.38 Gomes Ferreira
mentioned a powder known in Minas Gerais as For all, made of the thick
bark of a tree, as having been introduced by an inlander paulista.39 He also
a rmed that the paulistas had learned from the Carijós Indians the use of
rewater for the cure of colds and the incorporation of local roots, such as
butua and pacacoanha, in other treatments.
Gomes Ferreira (see Figure 5.4) incorporated other medications as he
“heard” that they were used successfully in the region, such as the application
of embaúba for the treatment of hernias, and an emulsion of almonds, which
in these Minas was called pevitada, the liana known as poalha, sapé, or the
caraíva tree. He suggested in one of his medical prescriptions that green
apples, not found in America, could be replaced by green genipaps. He also
exalted the virtues of the water smartweed, or cataia, raiz-de-mil homens,
poaia, erva orelha de onça, and the jalap, or batata de purga, also known as
dos paulistas’ purga. From these observations, we can perceive that some
practical knowledge was formed, based on the daily experience of these
men, who went around the region performing their curative practices.40
Gomes Ferreira warned that the “herbs, roots, mineral and animal
things, that exist in the Brazil and its backlands” are “very useful to public
health” and that the local apothecary shops should develop medications
incorporating them. José Cardoso de Miranda and his associate, Gomes
Ferreira, prescribed chá de picão, “very well known in Minas,” the Santa
Maria’s herb. ey also added to their medical prescriptions many products
from Africa or the East, such as coral red, myrrh, dates, cinnamon, musk,
sandal or nutmeg.41
e three surgeons were particularly interested in those diseases that
attacked the large populations of slaves in Minas Gerais. Slaves were these
authors’ main patients, and they were o en sent by their masters to be
cured of the diverse maladies that a icted them. Many of these diseases
were associated with the terrible feeding and living conditions the slaves
had to endure. In the eighteenth century, Minas Gerais became the primary
destination for a growing population that moved to Brazil. Slaves provided
the bulk of the manual labor, both for the mining industry and for rural
activities and basic services in the mining communities. In this way, over the
course of the eighteenth century, the region held a gigantic concentration
of slaves, estimated at close to 65 percent of the total population of the
Tropical Empiricism • 143
captaincy, which itself oscillated between 300,000 individuals at mid-century
to 400,000 by century’s end. e living condi tions of these slaves were worse
than imaginable. High mortality and low fertility rates meant that manual
labor had to be constantly replenished through the Atlantic slave trade.
As such, a er being imprisoned under the harshest circumstances in the
interior of Africa and during the long overseas journey, and subjected to
the worst conditions in terms of food and health, slaves still had to endure
many months of forced marches from Rio de Janeiro or Bahia toward the
country’s interior, where the mines were located.42
Under these conditions, slaves garnered high prices in Minas and were
expensive investments that masters attempted to preserve by caring for
their illnesses through surgeon-barbers, who were less costly than medical
Figure 5.4 Contrary to what had occurred in the previous centuries, eighteenth-century
authors of medical treatises were not medically trained doctors but rather surgeons,
or surgeon-barbers. Luís Gomes Ferreira, who wrote the Erário Mineral (Mineral
Treasury) in 1735, was one of the most famous. Reproduced courtesy of Junia Furtado
144 • Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
doctors. Despite this care, alimentary, labor, and living conditions were
the worst imaginable for these slaves. A large number of the diseases
that a icted the slaves could be attributed to their work in the gold and
diamond mines, that forced slaves to spend many hours in the water or
in the subsoil (aside from the many accidents that occurred because of
landslides, soil avalanches, or oods). João Cardoso de Miranda was settled
in Bahia at this time and was particularly a icted with the scurvy that
killed or incapacitated a large number of the slaves that had disembarked
in Salvador. A er the Middle Passage, around 2,000 slaves died annually in
that single location.43
In Brazil, João Cardoso de Miranda became blind, which made practicing
medicine di cult, so he became involved in commerce, such as the slave
trade and the trade with Costa da Mina in Africa. For this reason, he became
the rst to discover the medicinal treatment for scurvy.44 Miranda’s medical
prescription consisted of tea of fresh herbs followed by a diet reinforced
with fresh food, such as chicken meat, lettuce, endives, wild chicory, and
purslanes. is probably provided the physically debilitated patients with
the vitamin C the absence of which was the cause of the malady. As Cardoso
de Miranda was involved in the slave trade, his discovery combined his
medical and commercial interests. In the single year of 1731, when he wrote
the King, he had cured more than 500 slaves attacked by scurvy, and in that
year he had prevented many deaths associated with the disease.
Luís Gomes Ferreira was also interested in scurvy. As Cardoso de
Miranda did not get the license to publish his discovery at once, Gomes
Ferreira in 1735 transcribed in the Erário Mineral the medical prescription
that the associate had developed. On the way back to the kingdom, when
he passed by Bahia, Miranda asked him to be the carrier of a letter in which
he asked that his invention be licensed. e reporting of Gomes Ferreira’s
medical prescription exempli es the production of medical knowledge
in Brazil, the contact that was established between the many men that
practiced medicine in the colony, and the forms of circulation of practical
knowledge that they developed. Cardoso de Miranda was able to publish
his study on scurvy only in 1741, and it had a profound implications.45
e comparison of these three surgeons’ writings about scurvy also
allows us to analyze the transformation that was occurring not only in the
treatment of the disease but in the understanding that doctors had of this
and other maladies that a icted populations in the tropics.46 Guided by
practical experience, these doctors revealed ever more frequently the origin
of various maladies and, despite disagreeing as to the causes, they agreed
that practical experience was the best way to ght them. ough João
Cardoso de Miranda a rmed that the cause of diseases was related to the
Tropical Empiricism • 145
slaves’ spirits during the overseas trip and attributed their physical maladies
to a disorder of moods, he not only realized that slaves were the majority
of the disease’s victims but that it was important to improve their living
conditions. For Luís Gomes Ferreira, the disease came from Africa, and he
blamed the slaves for its transmission: For this reason, it became known as
the disease of Luanda. He no longer believed that heavenly bodies were the
cause of disease, but he did realize that slaves were the group that was most
commonly a ected. Despite believing that the disease was contagious, he
was able to perceive that better living conditions allowed for a more robust
recovery. He was the rst to promulgate the cure that João Cardoso de
Miranda developed for this disease. Contrary to common practice, Cardoso
de Miranda also suggested that the fact that his slaves were plump and well
nourished improved their resistance and helped their recuperation from
the illness. In the second half of the century, however, scurvy was already
associated with types of food, as surgeon José Antônio Mendes observed.
To him, to call it “disease of Luanda” was justi ed just because it spread in
the ships from this region, but it was not a disease originated in that land;
it derived from the maltreatment to which the slaves were subjected along
the middle passage, because the most urgent causes of such complaint were
the gross, thick, and putrid food that is given to slaves in the greatest part
of this America, mainly to the ones that come from the coast of Africa, who
maintain themselves in the large amount of supplies not only gross but
o en a bit rotten, also drinking rather foul water.47
e art of medicine in the colony also required profound knowledge of the
daily activities of the local inhabitants, as the communal ties characteristic
of their way of living were clearly re ected in the prophylaxis of the diseases.
e sick body forged ties of sociability. Alongside compassion and kinship,
the doctor had to acquire a knowledge of the interior of houses and the
details of patients’ lives. In his medical prescriptions, Gomes Ferreira added
old shoes, enxofre de verrugas, cistern water, human oil, horse feces or
those of healthy boys, and garden vegetables, among others. José Antônio
Mendes prescribed breast milk, white bread already moldy, powder of
chimney rust, mare’s milk, dove fat, blacksmith’s lings—ingredients that
needed to be begged, borrowed, or bargained for among the community.48
Among the prescribed medications, there were also some with mineral
and animal origin. is medicine, based on sympathy and antipathy, was
based on the notion that the various elements transmitted among them-
selves their qualities and defects. Consequently, there was a pragmatic
preoccupation to isolate the diverse elements and nd their speci c uses,
but they also shared the idea of a magical capacity to transmit their virtues.
Because of this, it was enough that some objects were used by the patient
146 • Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
for him to get cured. Gomes Ferreira suggests the use of bezoar stone or
dogtooth for earache, and José Antônio Mendes recommends to tubercular
patients that they use “vervain [sic] root” on the neck, “that is averse to
these complaints and heal them.”49
Water, for example, was the cause of many diseases, but it could also be
the cure as well. João Cardoso de Miranda’s text proclaimed the virtues of
a prodigious lagoon in Minas Gerais. A er arriving in Brazil, he became
partially blind, and it was his eye disease that led him to Minas Gerais
in 1749 in search of a treatment for his blindness in that lagoon, whose
miraculous waters were becoming famous. Feeling much better a er the
baths, he decided to write a book about the prodigious waters of Lagoa
Santa, as the place became known. e belief in the miraculous power of
water was compatible with the medicine of that time, as the world for these
writers was ruled and governed by God. However, Cardoso de Miranda’s
account was not limited to the magical and religious explanation: He also
reported the studies done there by the Italian doctor Antonio Cialli, that
“consented that the water had in itself the two most useful minerals that
impregnate the water, as vitriol and iron do.”50
Medical knowledge was impregnated with religious and magical practices
and beliefs as well. God’s time was the time of eternity and transcended by
far terrestrial life and dominated it. Because of this, José Antônio Mendes
himself advised the doctors that, before assisting anyone, “you should
soon demand that the patient confess and receive the sacrament, […] the
communion, in pursuit of God as the Father and Master of everything
created, that this patient will overcome such complaint.”51 e treatments
should be applied with faith, as many of the diseases were thought to
originate from spells or disbelief. Likewise, the time of cure also belonged
to God and depended on His will. O en the treatment was to be given
while reciting a Hail Mary. is technique not only standardized and
universalized the duration of the treatment, it elevated the patient’s mind
to heaven.
Conclusion
In eighteenth-century Brazil, Luís Gomes Ferreira, João Cardoso de
Miranda, and José Antônio Mendes carried on the tradition of what
came to be called “tropical medicine,” as they were primarily concerned
with knowing the speci city of local diseases and treatments. e most
important feature of their work was the emphasis on observable practical
experience as a central premise of learned knowledge. is allowed these
authors to rmly incorporate plants, animals, and the natural remedies
Tropical Empiricism • 147
that they learned form Brazilian popular medicine. e use of these
medicinal simples as a panacea-like cure derived from their contact with
native populations. e three surgeons were able to valorize this common
or vulgar knowledge because they were able to see its utility through their
own empirical, practical experience. However, they injected this newfound
knowledge into a cognitive system the structure of which was increasingly
based on empiricism. In the end, they attempted to ground this knowledge
in a language that was accessible to the common reader by constructing
texts that were primarily based on easy recipes whose products were
easily available to the average reader in Brazil. However, they also wanted
recognition from doctors who were the ultimate arbiters in determining
whether their contributions to the knowledge of materia medica would be
incorporated into their more erudite frameworks.52
Knowledge of the treatments and natural circumstances of the New
World circulated regularly between Europe and the Americas. As such, at
the same time that books were being produced in America and becoming
works of reference among European intellectuals, the inverse was also
true, making it di cult to distinguish a single origin for the formulation
of this knowledge. e example of this dual process can be observed in the
formulation, circulation, and appropriation of a series of medicinal cures
developed by the Portuguese doctor João Curvo Semedo, who published
his medical prescriptions in a set of books that became extremely popular
throughout Portugal’s empire in the eighteenth century. In 1695, he
published the Medicinal Polyanthea, which was followed by the Sentinel
of life against the hostilities of death (1720) and the Memorial of many
simples.53 His books were based on medical prescriptions that he called
“Curvian secrets,” a set of compound elements—including bezoars,
antidotes, and water—with a majority of these treatments made with
ingredients from Brazil, Africa, and Asia. Many of these prescriptions can
be found in the books of the three surgeon-barbers discussed in the last
section of this chapter. Many of these remedies were learned from native
populations but were also present in the treatises of Curvo Semedo, whose
books were part of Gomes Ferreira and Mendes Miranda’s libraries. If, on
the one hand, this seems to con rm the hypothesis that knowledge was
regularly exchanged between America and Europe, it also shows, on the
other, that by incorporating this knowledge within an erudite framework,
European intellectuals took advantage of the techniques and knowledge of
the indigenous populations while at the same time isolating this knowledge
from the indigenous context. e three surgeons immortalized themselves
through the legacy that they le in the form of texts and treatises, the result
of their skills in observing the world around them.
148 • Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
Notes
1 James Goodyear, Jr., Agents of Empire: Portuguese doctors in colonial Brazil and
the idea of tropical disease (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1982).
2 Peter Coates, “ e world beyond Europe,” in Nature: Western attitudes since
ancient times (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), 82–109;
Antonio Barrera, “Local herbs, global medicines: commerce, knowledge, and
commodities in Spanish America,” in Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen, eds,
Merchants and Marvels: commerce, science and art in Early Modern Europe (New
York and London: Routledge, 2002), 163–81.
3 Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the order of nature: (1150–
1750) (New York: Zone Books, 1998).
4 I am not resurrecting any kind of positivist narrative of knowledge, as empirical
practices are always in relation with belief systems and require languages of
representation that mediate them. See Peter Dear, “ e meanings of experience,”
in Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston, eds, e Cambridge History of Science,
vol. 3: Early Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006),
106–31; Sharla M. Fett, “Sacred plants: the cross-cultural context for African
American herbal medicine,” in Working Cures: healing, health and power on
Southern Slave plantation (Chapel Hill, NC: e University of North Carolina
Press, 2002), 60–83 (ch. 3).
5 See for example Peter Dear, “Totius in verba: Rhetoric and authority in the Royal
Society,” Isis 76 (1985): 145–61; omas daCosta Kaufmann, “Empiricism and
community in early modern science and art: some comments on baths, plants
and Courts,” in Anthony Gra on, and Nancy Sirasi, eds, Natural Particulars:
nature and the disciplines in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, MA: e MIT
Press, 1999), 401–17.
6 Anthony Gra on, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: the power of tradition and the shock
of discovery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Gianna Pomata
and Nancy Siraisi, eds, Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern
Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); see more generally
Steven Shapin, e Scienti c Revolution (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press,
1996); Steven Shapin and Simon Scha er, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes,
Boyle, and the experimental life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1985).
7 See Smith and Findlen, eds, Merchants and Marvels.
8 Claudia Swan, “From blow sh to ower still life paintings: classi cation and its
images, circa 1600,” in Smith and Findlen, eds, Merchants and Marvels, 109–36;
see also Brian W. Ogilvie, e Science of Describing: natural history in Renaissance
Europe (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2006); David J. Arnold, e
Problem of Nature: environment, culture and European expansion (Oxford and
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996).
9 Júnia Furtado, “Science and Scientists—Brazil/Portugal,” in J. Michael Francis,
ed., Iberia and the Americas – Culture, Politics and History: a multidisciplinary
encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2005), 916–23; Mary Lindemann,
Tropical Empiricism • 149
Medicine and Society in Early Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999).
10 Moita, Irisalva. V Centenário do Hospital Real de Todos os Santos (Lisbon: Casa
da Moeda, 1992).
11 Roy Porter, “Medicine and the body,” in Flesh in the Age of Reason: the modern
foundations of body and soul (New York: Norton, 2003), 44–61; Katharine Park,
“Natural particulars: medical epistemology, practice and the literature of healing
springs,” in Gra on and Siraisi, Natural Particulars, 347–67.
12 Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Visão do Paraíso, 6th edn (São Paulo: Brasiliense,
1994), 35–130. Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World
(New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1993). James Goodyear
Jr, “Brazil: terrestrial paradise?” in Agents of Empire: Portuguese doctors in
colonial Brazil and the idea of tropical disease, 33–72 (mimeo). Eduardo Blázquez
Mateos, Viajes al paraíso: la representación de la naturaleza en el Renascimento
(Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2003).
13 Licurgo de Castro Santos Filho, História Geral da medicina brasileira (São Paulo:
Hucitec/Edusp, 1991). Eustáquio Duarte, ed., Morão, Rosa e Pimenta: notícia
dos três primeiros livros em vernáculo sobre a medicina no Brasil (Pernambuco:
Arquivo Público Estadual, 1956).
14 Francisco Moreno-Carvalho, “Medicina no Brasil Holandês: apontamentos sobre
o tratado de Zacuto Lusitano,” in Alberto Dines, Francisco Moreno-Carvalho,
and Nachman Falbel, eds, A fênix ou o eterno retorno: 460 anos da presença
judaica em Pernambuco (Brasília: Ministério da Cultura, 2001), 165–79.
15 Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “Changing European interpretations of the reliability
of indiginous sources,” in How to Write the History of the New World: histories,
epistemologies and identities in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 60–129.
16 Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “Iberian science in the Renaissance: ignored how
much longer?” in Perspectives on Science, 12(1) (2004): 86–124., Júnia F. Furtado
“Barbeiros, cirurgiões e médicos na Minas colonial,” Revista do Arquivo Público
Mineiro, Belo Horizonte, XLI (July–December 2005): 88–105.
17 Paulo Herkenho , ed., O Brasil e os holandeses (Rio de Janeiro: Sextante, 1999).
18 Gaspar Barleo, Rerum per octennium in Brasilia, et alibi nuoer gestarum
(Amsterdam: Ioannis Blaeu, 1647). Willem Piso, Georg Marggraf and Johannes
Laet, Historia naturalis Brasiliae. Auspicio et bene cio Illustriss. I. Mauritii Com
Nassau (Leiden: Franciscum Hackium/Amsterdam: Ludovicus Elzevirium,
1648). Gilberto Freyre, Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen from a Brazilian
Viewpoint ( e Hague: e Johan Maurits van Nassau Stichting, 1979), 237–46.
(http://www.bvgf.fgf.org.br/portugues/obra/opusculos/johan_maurits.htm)
19 e pioneer in the incorporation of plants in the Materia Medica, which the
maritime trips revealed to Europeans, was Garcia d’Órta (1501–68), a Portuguese
doctor who lived in India. From his practice of medicine in the region, by
observing local doctors and how they used the elements from nature around
them, he wrote the Colloquy of the simples and drugs and medical things from
India. Garacia D’Órta, Colóquios dos simples e drogas da Índia (Lisbon: Imprensa
Nacional/Casa da Moeda, 1987). James Goodyear Jr., “ e Empirist: Garcia
150 • Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
d’Orta,” in Agents of Empire: Portuguese doctors in colonial Brazil and the idea of
tropical disease, 81–93 (mimeo).
20 Cristóvão da Costa (1538–94), surgeon from the Portuguese armada, born in
Africa, lived in India and was deeply a ected by Garcia d’Órta’s book. He wrote in
Spanish the Treatise of drugs and medicine of the East Indies, where he attempted
to review and extend the observations done in the Colloquy of the simples and
drugs. He added other simples, corrected some information and accompanied
his notes with drawings of almost all plants described.
21 e Sevillian doctor Nicolas Monardes, despite having never le his hometown,
wrote an important medicine book incorporating medicinal plants from the
New World. Nicolás, Monardes, Historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de
nuestras Indias Occidentales que sirven en Medicina (Seville: Alonso Escrivano,
1574).
22 Lucile Allorge and Olivier Ikor, La fabuleuse odyssée des plantes: les botanistes
voyagers, les Jardins des Plantes, les herbiers (Paris: J.C.Lattès, 2003), 91–3.
23 C.R. Boxer, e Dutch in Brazil 1624–1654 (London: Oxford University Press,
1957).
24 Willem Piso and Georg Marggraf and Johannes Laet, Historia naturalis Brasiliae
(Natural history of Brasil) (Leiden, Amsterdam: F. Hackius, L. Elzevir, 1648).
25 David Freedberg, “Ciência, comércio e arte,” in Paulo Herkenho , ed.,. O Brasil
e os holandeses (1630–1654), 192–217.
26 Pedro Correia do Lago, “L’expédition de Jean-Maurice de Nassau,” in Frans Post,
Le Brésil à la cour de Louis XIV (Paris: Louvre, 2005).
27 Willem Piso, História natural e médica da Índia Oriental (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto
Nacional do Livro, 1957), 46.
28 Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: nature and nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001).
29 Willen Piso História natural e médica da Índia Oriental, 45. Svetlana Alpers,
e Art of Describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century (Chicago, IL: Chicago
University Press, 1984).
30 Francis Dutra, “ e practice of medicine in early modern Portugal: the role and
social status of the físico-mor and the surgião-mor,” in Israel J. Katz, ed., Libraries,
History, Diplomacy and the Performing Arts: essays in honor of Carleton Sprague
Smith (New York: Pendragon Press/New York Public Library, 1991), 135–69.
Júnia F. Furtado, “Barbeiros, cirurgiões e médicos na Minas colonial.”
31 Márcia Moisés Ribeiro A ciência dos trópicos: a arte médica no Brasil do século
XVIII (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1997).
32 Júnia F. Furtado, ed., Erário Mineral de Luís Gomes Ferreira, 2 vols (Critical
Edition) (Belo Horizonte: Fundação João Pinheiro, 2002). Charles Boxer, “A
rare Luso-Brazilian medical treatise and its author: Luis Gomes Ferreira and his
Erário Mineral of 1735 and 1755,” Indiana University Bookman, 10: 48–70, 1969.
Charles Boxer, “A footnote to Luís Gomes Ferreira, Erário Mineral, 1735 and
1755,” Indiana University Bookman, 11: 89–92, 1973.
33 João Cardoso de Miranda, Relação cirurgica, e médica, na qual se trata, e declara
especialmente hum novo methodo para curar a infecção escorbutica (Lisbon,
1741).
Tropical Empiricism • 151
34 João Cardoso de Miranda, Prodigiosa Lagoa descoberta nas congonhas das minas
do Sabará, ed. Augusto da Silva Carvalho (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade,
1925).
35 José Antonio Medes, Governo de Mineiros (Lisbon: O cina de Antonio Roiz
Galhardo, 1770). “Mineiros” means a native or inhabitant of the Minas Gerais
captaincy.
36 Júnia F. Furtado, “Gold,” in Shepherd Krech III, J.R. McNeill, and Carolyn
Merchant, eds, Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (London and New
York: Routledge, 2003), vol. 2, 597–8.
37 Members of the expeditions to the hinterland called bandeiras. Edward Goodman,
“ e Bandeirantes,” in e Explorers of South America (New York: Macmillan,
1972), 102–15.
38 Sérgio Buarque holanda, “A botica da natureza,” in Caminhos e fronteiras (São
Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995), 74–89.
39 Native or inhabitant of São Paulo captaincy, who discovered the gold mines in
Minas Gerais.
40 Júnia F. Furtado, “Arte e segredo: o licenciado Luís Gomes Ferreira e seu
caleidoscópio de imagens,” in Júnia F. Furtado, ed., Erário Mineral de Luís
Gomes Ferreira, Coleção Mineiriana (Belo Horizonte: Fundação João Pinheiro,
2002), 3–30.
41 Vera Regina Beltrão Marques, Natureza em boiões: medicinas e boticários no
Brasil setecentista (Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 1999).
42 Laird Begard, Slavery and demogra c and economic history of Minas Gerais,
1720–1888 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
43 Joseph C. Miller, “Floating tombs: the maritime trade of the Brazilians,” in Way of
Death: merchant capitalism and the Angolan slave trade (1730–1830) (Madison,
WI: e University of Wisconsin, 19780 [??PLEASE CHECK DATE??], 314–78.
Herbert Klein, “ e Middle Passage,” in e Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge,
MA: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
44 e discovery of the treatment for scurvy is most o en attributed to James Lind
(surgeon of the Royal Navy and Royal Naval Hospital) who, in 1747, spread news
about how the disease could be treated through a diet including citrus fruits. See
James Lind, A Treatise of the Scurvy (1753).
45 “Carta de João Cardoso de Miranda ao Físico-mor do Reino sobre um novo
medicamento para o Mal de Luanda,” in Júnia F. Furtado, ed., Erário Mineral de
Luís Gomes Ferreira, vol. 2, 689–95.
46 Mirko D. Grmek, “Les grands éaux,” in Histoire de la pensée médicale en
Occident: De la Renaissance aux Lumières (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1996),
253–78. Philip D. Curtin, “Europe and the Atlantic World: Africa and the disease
exchange,” in Jeremy Adelman, ed., Colonial legacies: the problem of persistence
in Latin American History (New York: Routledge, 1999), 15–27.
47 Mendes Governo de Mineiros, 85–6.
48 Betânia Gonçalves Figueiredo, A arte de curar (Rio de Janeiro: Vício de Leitura,
2002).
49 Mendes, Governo de Mineiros, 114.
50 Miranda, Prodigiosa Lagoa, 9–11.
152 • Science and Empire in the Atlantic World
51 Mendes, Governo de Mineiros, 42, 43, 52.
52 Holanda, “A botica da natureza,” in Caminhos e fronteiras, 74–89.
53 João Curvo Semmedo, Atalaia da vida contra as hostilidades da morte (Lisbon:
O cina Ferreyrenciana, 1720).
