An Aztec Herbal

Abstract

OUR fragmentary knowledge of the early history of botany in Mexico has lately received a remarkable addition in the form of a reproduction of a manuscript herbal of the sixteenth century, written by an Aztec physician, and now edited by Dr. Emily Walcott Emmart¹. It had long been known that, by the period of the Spanish conquest, gardening and medicinal botany in Mexico had reached a high degree of elaboration². The fact that the language of the Nahuas included several different names for different types of garden, shows that horticulture played a considerable part in their lives. Montezuma possessed gardens for flowers and medicinal herbs, in which, according to the chronicler, Cervantes de Salazar, he “did not allow any vegetables or fruit to be grown, saying that it was not kingly to cultivate plants for utility or profit in his pleasance”. He also owned vegetable gardens and orchards, but these he seldom visited, since he held them to be “for slaves or merchants”. His contempt for mere utility did not extend, however, to curative herbs. He ordered his physicians to make experiments with the medicinal plants in his gardens, and to use the best-tried remedies for the benefit of the lords of his court.