Context and Conclusions

Libellus de medicinalibus Indorum herbis (Codex Cruz-Badianus) of 1552 is surely one of the most amazing botanical documents of the sixteenth century. Its history is legendary. It was written in Nahuatl by Martin de la Cruz (Silvermoon 2007:209), an indigenous Nahua (Aztec) physician at the Colegio de Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco and translated to Latin by Juan Badiano, an indigenous faculty member and former student. The illustrated Latin volume was sent as a gift to King Carlos I of Spain and ended up in obscurity in the Vatican library until it was rediscovered in 1929 by Charles Upson Clark, professor of history at Columbia University. The Latin version was independently translated into English by William Gates and Emily Walcott Emmart, both associated with Johns Hopkins University. The Codex Cruz-Badianus never received the attention it deserved despite its importance in understanding Aztec medicine and botany and the history of the colonial period in New Spain. As Bruce Bylund (2000) points out: “Several facsimiles and a handful of analytical studies exist, but not nearly as many as would be expected to have come from the earliest complete medical texts in the New World.”