|
The Francisco Hernández Expedition ((スペイン語:Comisión de Francisco Hernández a Nueva España)) is considered to be the first scientific expedition to the New World, led by Francisco Hernández de Toledo, a naturalist and physician of the Court of King Philip II, who was highly regarded in Spain because of his works on herbal medicine. Among some of the most important achievements of the expedition were the discovery and subsequent introduction in Europe of an incredible amount of new plants that had never seen before in the Old World, but that quickly gained acceptance and become very popular among European consumers, such as the Pineapple, Cocoa, Corn, and many others. ==Expedition== In 1570 Hernández was appointed Archiater physician for the New World and commended by the King to embark on a scientific expedition to study the region's medicinal plants. Hernandez set sail for the New World in August 1571, taking along his son, and landed in February 1572 in Veracruz. For three years he toured Mexico and Central America together with a geographer, painters, botanists and native doctors, collecting and classifying botanical specimens. He also studied the culture and medical achievements of the native Nahua peoples, taking notes and preparing numerous illustrations assisted by three indigenous painters who had been baptized as Antón, Baltazar Elías and Pedro Vázquez. Among the botanical specimens the expedition discovered were the Pineapple, Cocoa (known by the locals as Cacahuatl), Corn, Guaiacum officinale, Smilax regelii, Strychnos nux-vomica (known by the locals as Mahuatl Quauhtlepatli), sweet granadilla, passionfruit, and several plants with hallucinogenic properties used in rituals such as the Peyote, Maguey, Datura or the Devil's weed. From March 1574 until his return to Spain in 1577, Hernandez lived in Mexico where he carried out medical tests using the plants he had gathered and put together a large botanical collection and studied local medicinal practices and archeological sites. In 1576 during the epidemic (referred to as ''cocoliztli'', Nahuatl for "pest," during the colonial-period population decline of the Aztecs,) Hernández performed autopsies in the Hospital Real de San José de los Naturales in collaboration with surgeon Alonso López de Hinojosos and physician Juan de la Fuente. Hernandez described the gruesome symptoms of with clinical accuracy. These included high fever, severe headache, vertigo, black tongue, dark urine, dysentery, severe abdominal and thoracic pain, large nodules behind the ears that often invaded the neck and face, acute neurologic disorders, and profuse bleeding from the nose, eyes, and mouth, with death frequently occurring in 3 to 4 days. He also worked on Castilian translation of a treatise on natural history by Pliny the Elder. The result was an impressive work, composed of 24 books on plants, one about the fauna, one on minerals, and ten volumes of paintings and illustrations that were brought to Spain to be published. José de Acosta calculated that the total cost of the expedition represented about 60,000 ducats, an enormous sum at the time. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Francisco Hernández Expedition (1570–77)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|