Nicolás Monardes

Nicolás Bautista Monardes (* 1493 in Seville, † October 10, 1588 ) was a Spanish physician and botanist.

Life and work

After studying at the University of Alcalá de Henares in 1533 he obtained his title as a doctor. It shall exercise medicine in Seville and devotes much of his time to trade, especially the slave trade.

Monardes published several books of different meanings: In Diálogo llamado pharmacodilosis ( 1536) he surveyed the humanism and proposes the study of some classical authors, especially Dioscorides Pedanios before. He discusses the importance of Greek and Arabic medicine in De Secanda Vena in pleuriti between Greco and Arabes Concordia ( 1539). De Rosa and partibus eius ( 1540) is of roses and citrus. The most significant and well known work Monardes ' was Historia de las Cosas medical, queer, the Se de Nuestras Indias Occidentales published in three parts ( 1565, 1571 and completed in 1574 ).

He benefits from a merchant position and from his doctor skills to realize a contract under which he introduced the unknown plants that came from the New World. He has such proportion of the spread of pineapples, the peanut, the corn and the Coca and offered the first illustration of tobacco. His work was translated by Charles de l' Ecluse in the Latin language.

Ehrentaxon

Carl Linnaeus named in his honor the genus Monarda plant the mint family ( Lamiaceae).