Drugs, Health, Bodies and Souls in the Tropics ... - Ines G. Županov

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for regeneration. Following Galen's theory of primary qualities and the complexionate
balance between passive (dry and wet) and active (hot and cold) qualities inherent in
the simples, the medicine depended on counterbalancing the patient's disorder, the socalled
cure by contraries. 59 Hence, the dialectics between ingestion and expulsion, in
order to stabilize the balance of the four humors, syncopates Orta's text. Thus, within
a few lines, a recipe for a delicious food will be followed by advice on how to purge
the bowls with an appropriate clyster. Similarly, a watermelon (pateca) is praised for
its exquisite taste and for its diuretic, vermifuge, anti-fever, somniferous effects.
"It is one of the best fruits that I've seen in my life; and at certain times I prefer
it to our melons (melões); […] and most of it seems to be evacuated in urine
and some in diarrhea (câmaras); and no thing remains subjected to corruption
(corrução), as it happens with melons and cucumbers (pepinos e
cogombros)." 60
For Orta's Goan audience, it must have been quite reassuring to find that the goods
easily procured on the local market had such various uses. He also prescribed
watermelon (melam da India or pateca) for choleric fevers, to warm up liver and
kidneys.
Physicians, Quacks and Confessors
While Orta was incurably optimistic about nature's ability to provide cures and
remedies for all the worst diseases and ailments, he was suspicious of the medical
specialists ( médicos, sangradores, boticários, dais, curandeiros) one encountered in
Goa. Whether they were Arabs, Gentiles, Coraçones, Jews, Spaniards or Portuguese,
for a majority of them money and easy enrichment won over their sense of
professional ethics. Regardless of their "ethnicity", there were illustrious exceptions,
such as Ruano, Dimas Bosque and a few other doctors whom Orta encountered at the
various native courts in the Deccan and on the Malabar Coast. However, his
judgements of other specialists is never submerged or short-circuited by way of readymade
generalizations or "ethnic" or "religious" stereotyping. 61 Human beings with
whom he interacted are defined according to their moral qualities or their humoral
temperament. They can be brave, cowardly, avaricious, generous, choleric,
melancholic, etc., but they are not avaricious because they are Jews, brave because
Portuguese or cruel because Muslim, as Orta's Catholic contemporaries seem to have
perceived members of other religions.
Dispersed in his text are all kinds of villains and heroes, learned physicians
and quacks from all camps. Just as he proceeded with an identification of medicinal
plants, he also identified doctors and healers without any preconceived cultural or
social blinders. Most of all, he underscored at every point the usefulness of crossing
over, borrowing from one another, exchanging prescriptions, adapting to situations,
climates, regions or individual bodies. "A shoemaker does not make identical shoes
for everyone" is one of Orta's chosen Galenic dictums. 62 This is one of the reasons
why his text lacks a unified, fixed methodological framework. He even refused to
59 The strength of the simple, which might be predominantly hot and wet was quantified on a scale
from temperate (neutral) to the fourth degree.
60 Orta, vol, 2, p. 135
61 The exception, perhaps out of precaution, is his treatment of a Lutheran botanist Leonard Fuchs.
Orta, vo.l379-380. Also the inhabitants of São Lourenço considered very barbarous. Orta, vol. 1, p.
203.
62 Orta, vol. 1, p. 141
Ines G. Županov, CNRS, Paris