Francisco Hernández de Toledo

Francisco Hernández de Toledo (La Puebla de Montalbán, Toledo 1514 – Madrid 28 January 1587) was a naturalist and court physician to the King of Spain.

Hernández was among the first wave of Spanish Renaissance physicians practicing according to the revived principles formulated by Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna. Hernández studied medicine and botany at the University of Alcalá and may have traveled between cities in Spain, as it was common among physicians seeking to make a name for themselves. Moving from Seville with his wife and children, Hernández served briefly in the Hospital y Monasterio de Guadalupe and then at the Hospital Mendoza in Toledo, where he gained prominence for his studies of medicinal botany and publication of a Castilian translation of a work on natural history by Pliny the Elder. In 1567 Hernández became a personal physician to King Philip II.

In 1570, Hernández was ordered to embark on the first scientific mission in the New World, a study of the region's medicinal plants and animals. Accompanied by his son Juan, he traveled for 7 years collecting and classifying specimens, interviewing the indigenous people through translators and conducting medical studies in Mexico. He was assisted with his illustrations by three indigenous painters - Baptized Antón, Baltazar Elías and Pedro Vázquez. During the colonial-period population decline of the Aztecs in 1576, 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 the epidemic (referred to as cocoliztli, Nahuatl for "pest") with clinical accuracy.

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