Francisco Hernández’s Expedition

This illustration of coanenepilli (serpent’s tongue), a plant used by Mesoamericans to treat urinary ailments, is based on the findings of the first European scientific expedition to America. This expedition, led by Francisco Hernández in collaboration with a team of Indigenous medics, botanists, and artists, began in 1570, traveling across Mesoamerica and documenting over five thousand plants and their Nahua medical uses.

In 1574, after four years of research travel, Hernández settled at the Royal Hospital of Naturals in Mexico City, where he compiled his findings, tested the efficacy of Nahua medicinal knowledge and plants on the hospital’s patients, and established an exuberant medical garden with the plants that he had collected. While working in Mexico City, Hernández witnessed the devastating famine and epidemic outbreak of 1576. During the calamity, he carried out autopsies and studied the symptoms of the infected. He lamented the countless lives lost and the irrecoverable medicinal knowledge that they guarded: “[it would not] be possible to recover the loss . . . of the many Native doctors and artists who perished in this pestilence” (Boumediene 2020). The imminent social collapse put an abrupt end to Hernández’s expedition. In 1577, he abandoned the continent without embarking to the Andes, where he was supposed to continue his research.