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

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thought that there were many other good simples and preparations. 89 His writing
resembles picaresque traveling from one part of the earth to the other with utter
disregard of frontiers, customs officers and passports. China, Brazil, Persia, or any
other geographical region, appear in his text to be connected by underground passages
in which etymology, trade, illnesses, plants, people and, what he did not know, germs,
circulated, enriching the knowledge of the world. The rhythm of acquisition of
knowledge had accelerated in an unprecedented manner since, according to Orta, in
his own time, the Portuguese knew in one day more than the Romans in hundred
years. 90 In a similar fashion another Renaissance figure, João de Barros, Orta's
contemporary and a famous grammarian, continued to compare the Portuguese to the
ancient Romans. However, while he envisioned and desired linguistic conquest, that
is, capturing foreign words, although ultimately imposing the Portuguese language
even in the "Indian temples", Orta appropriated foreign things and words, not to build
an empire but to consume them. 91 The consumption of things and words was meant to
support and cure individual bodies – be they Portuguese, Muslim, Gujarati, Brahman,
Baneanes, etc.
Orta's was an empire of humors and his claim to authority reposed on the
ability to keep them in check, in spite of the fact that "every day there [were] new
illnesses". 92 And to prove that his task was worthy of effort, he invoked divine help as
confirmation. Regarding the appearance of syphilis he said,
"God is so charitable that in every country he gave us the remedy to cure it;
because the one who gives the illness gives the remedy for it; if not, as
Temistio said, our knowledge is the smallest part of what we do not know.
And since we do not know remedies in order to cure all of them [illnesses], we
bring ruibarbo from China, from where we bring páo or raizes for curing
sarna de Castella [i.e. syphilis], and cana fistola we bring from India, and
manná from Persia and guaiacam from the West Indies". 93
The boundary between natural and supernatural remains permeable and the divine
(and demonic, for that matter) signposts seem to be randomly scattered over the face
of the earth. It was up to courageous adventurers to collect them and bring them all to
serve one and the same purpose - healing the ailing body. A soldier (and/or merchant
and/or traveler) was an exemplary syphilitic body, both victim and carrier of the
disease. According to Orta, the boubas which betrayed the infection were not
considered shameful in Goa. Moreover, they were a cause of boasting among the local
"studs". 94 Some of the reasons for taking this illness lightly were that in the first stage
it appeared curable, it had spread with record speed throughout Europe and its
colonies, and it was considered to be a providential illness, displaying divine wrath
and cured by divine mercy. Medical explanations, based on the idea that the primary
cause was God's will, were reassuring and placed both the physicians and the patients
in a symmetrical world of preternatural axles and pulleys.
Orta's exuberant, appetizing and soft-spoken textual crescendo reveals much,
but hides even more. His exchanges with ayurvedic and yunani medical specialists
confirmed his Galenic humoral view that human bodies were basically adaptable
89 Orta, vol. 1, p. 241.
90 Orta, vol. 1, p. 210.
91 Barros, João de, Gramática da Língua Portuguesa; Cartinha, Gramática, Diálogo em Louvor da
Nossa Linguagem e diálogo da Viciosa Vergonha,ed. by Maria Leonor Carvalhão Buescu, Lisbon,
1971, p. 405.
92 Orta, vo. 1, p. 179.
93 Orta, vol. 1, p. 179. Themistio was a friend of Julius the Apostate and the commentator of Aristotle.
94 Laval, vol. 2, p. 535-6.
Ines G. Županov, CNRS, Paris