Garcia de Orta

Garcia de Orta was born to a family of Spanish Jews who had fled to Portugal and been forcibly baptised. He studied medicine at Salamanca and Alcala, then sailed to Goa in 1534, where he practised for more than thirty years. His Coloquios dos simples e drogas da India, printed in Goa in 1563, described some sixty Asian medicinal plants from direct observation and experiment rather than from inherited authority; Carolus Clusius translated it into Latin and it became the standard European reference. He died in 1568; his sister Catarina was burned at the stake in 1569 for secretly practising Judaism, and in 1580 the Inquisition condemned Garcia posthumously and burned his remains.