PISO, Willem et al.

First edition, substantially expanded and revised from an earlier work of 1648, and superbly illustrated, of the Dutch naturalist Willem Piso’s (1611-78) study of the medical natural history of the West Indies, issued with Georg Marggraf’s (1610-44) topographical, anthropological and natural-historical survey of Brazil and Chile, with descriptions of the culture and languages of their Indigenous inhabitants, Jacob de Bondt’s (1592-1631) natural-historical work on the East Indies, a hotch-potch of new material and portions of and an earlier published work, and, finally, a second, short botanical work by Piso on the medicinal and aromatic plants of the Indies, which appears for the first time.

Piso and Marggraf had undertaken a research voyage together to Brazil under the patronage of Johan Maurice of Nassau-Siegen (1604-79), governor of Dutch Brazil, their work being published in 1648 as Historia Naturalis Brasiliae, edited and with contributions by the geographer and director of the Dutch West India Company, Johannes de Laet (1581-1649). Probably de Laet’s most important role was the decoding of Marggraf’s work, written in a secret cipher before his death in Angola in 1644. A decade later, Piso essentially highjacked the project, putting his own name on the title (which had previously carried only the dedication to Nassau-Siegen), inserting numerous laudatory poems to himself in Latin and Greek, and augmenting it with his new work on aromatic plants. Piso also chopped and changed de Bondt’s work on the East Indies, De Medicina Indorum, 1642, with new material, which he notes that the author had left unpublished on his death in Batavia in 1631. It was Piso’s treatment of Marggraf, however, that led to public censure. First, Piso actually reduced Marggraf’s name on the contents page (*2r), giving it a smaller font than that used for his own, whereas in the first edition they had received equal billing. More seriously, Piso severely cut and even appropriated Marggraf’s work, which in the original had run to eight books, and was accused of butchering it with numerous errors and misprints. The illustrated descriptions of animals for example, were simply lifted from Marggraf’s section and brought into Piso’s.

Rather disconcertingly for a book on the marvellous natural qualities of Dutch Brazil, Piso begins with a description of all the diseases that commonly arise in the West Indian climate, including ‘Lues Indica’, a syphilis-like venereal disease that he notes can be transmitted sexually and hereditarily, caught from rotting food, and affects Africans, Indigenous and Europeans alike. The remainder of his work is a survey of the sea animals, birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, amphibians, and plants of Brazil, frequently with reference to their dietary and medicinal qualities. Piso gives their Indigenous names first, along with their Dutch, Latin and Greek names, where appropriate. There are flashes of his personal experiences in the Americas (besides comments on the taste of various animals), such as his observation that tortoises make a ‘kik kik’ noise. There are illustrations of Black slaves working a sugar-mill, grinding the cane and cooking it in pans, under the direction of Europeans, with a description of the process, and another showing them grinding cassava flour. His short work at the end of the volume describes medicinal plants from both Indies, with their products, including nutmeg and mace (p. 173) and chocolate and cacao (pp. 196-198).

The remnants of Marggraf’s work include a description of the longitude and latitude of Brazil and Chile, with annual tables of the winds and climate, recorded by him between 1640-1642. He then describes the Indigenous Brazilian population, their physical qualities, health, and the diseases to which they are subject, the clothing of their men and women, their houses, food, warfare, religion, and language, the latter section derived from the grammar of the Jesuit Joseph of Anchieta (1534-97), with a brief dictionary. The same is then repeated for the native inhabitants of Chile. The work ends with a fine woodcut of a llama. De Bondt’s work opens with several dialogues in which he relates the climate and food of Batavia, before describing, much like Piso’s work, the diseases of the East Indies, with illustrated accounts of the medicinal properties of its flora and fauna, including a description of the tea plant.

‘Owing to the fact that a number of the woodcuts in this work are reproduced from the former this is sometimes said to be a second edition. It is in fact a different work, as a comparison of the contents will prove’ (Sabin).

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