Nicolás Monardes

Nicolás Bautista Monardes (1493 – 10 October 1588) was a Spanish physician and botanist.

The genus Monarda was named for him.

Monardes published several books of varying importance. In Diálogo llamado pharmacodilosis (1536), he examines humanism and suggests studying several classical authors, principally Pedanius Dioscorides. He discusses the importance of Greek and Arab medicine in De Secanda Vena in pleuriti Inter Grecos et Arabes Concordia (1539). De Rosa et partibus eius (1540) is about roses and citrus fruits. It is known that Monardes also believed that tobacco smoke was an infallible cure for everything.

Monardes' most significant and well known work was Historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, published in three parts under varying titles (in 1565, 1569 and completed in 1574; unchanged reprint in 1580). This was translated into Latin by Charles de l'Écluse and into English by John Frampton with the title "Joyfull News out of the New Found World".

Nicolás Monardes was born in Seville, Spain in 1493. He was the son of Nicoloso di Monardis, an Italian bookseller, and Ana de Alfaro, who was the daughter of a physician. Nicolás Monardes obtained a degree in art in 1530 and then in medicine three years later. After returning from his studies, Monardes began his practice of medicine in his hometown of Seville in 1533. Monardes later graduated from the University of Alcalá de Henares where he obtained his doctorate in medicine in 1547. He went on to marry Catalina Morales, who was the daughter of García Perez Morales, a professor of medicine at Seville. This connection to physicians on both sides of his family allowed Monardes to secure a good position in the world of medicine in Seville for the next fifty years. Monardes acquiring this high position in the medical world allowed him to get involved in the publishing of medical works with an emphasis on healing and medicine and trade with the colonies on the other side of the Atlantic. Monardes and Morales had seven children together. While some of Monardes’ children were able to travel to the Americas, Monardes himself was not able to accompany his offspring and had to learn about American drugs and herbs at the Seville docks. Eleven years after his wife died, Nicolás Monardes perished by way of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1588.

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