Quatro libros de la naturaleza (Mexico, 1615)
The Mexican imprint of 1615 in which a Dominican lay brother put Doctor Francisco Hernández's Latin survey of New Spain's plants and animals into Spanish, for people living on estancias and in mining camps where there was neither physician nor apothecary. Its chapter headings are Nahuatl; its drugs come from the Indian markets; and its compiler states on the page that he worked from corrupt copies and had lost the hearing he needed to learn the language.
Why this wins its question: Francisco Hernández's expedition is usually met as a bibliographic casualty — a great Latin survey that burned at the Escorial and was never properly published. What actually reached ordinary readers in the Americas is this book, and it is almost never quoted. The 1615 sheets are transcribed here: a title page addressed to people with no physician and no apothecary, chapter headings in Nahuatl, drugs sourced from the Indian tianguis, a proposal to transplant a Mexican tree to Spain — and, from the same prologue, the compiler's own admissions that his copies of Hernández were corrupt, that others had printed from them first, and that he had lost the hearing he needed to learn the language.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The title page reads "QVATRO LIBROS. DE LA NATVRALEZA, Y VIRTVDES DE LAS plantas, y animales que estan receuidos en el vso de Medicina en la Nueua España, y la Methodo, y correccion, y preparacion, que para administrallas se requiere con lo que el Doctor Francisco Hernandez escriuio en lengua Latina", the book being "Traduzido, y aumentados muchos simples, y Compuestos y otros muchos secretos curatiuos, por Fr. Francisco Ximenez, hijo del Conuento de S. Domingo de Mexico, Natural de la Villa de Luna del Reyno de Aragon", and printed "En Mexico, en casa de la Viuda de Diego Lopez Daualos. 1615".
The same page names the audience before it names the science: the work is "MVY VTIL PARA TODO GENERO DE gente q[ue] viue en estacias y Pueblos, do no ay Medicos, ni Botica", and states where copies could be bought — "en la tienda de Diego Garrido, en la esquina de la calle de Tacuba, y en la Porteria de S. Domingo". This is a practical handbook sold in Mexico City for use outside it.
The book was licensed entirely within New Spain. The Archbishop of Mexico Don Ioan de la Serna gave leave "En la Ciudad de Mexico, a veinte y siete dias del mes de Nouiembre, de mil y seyscientos y catorze años", having referred the examination to fray Luys Vallejo, who reported that he found in it nothing against the faith and judged it "muy vtil y prouechoso para todo genero de gente que auita este nueuo mundo"; the Dominican provincial fray Hernando Baçan licensed it at the Colegio de Portacoeli of Mexico on 30 October 1614 after the approbations of Pedro de Hortigosa and Doctor Diego Cisneros, and fray Bartholome Gomez approved it on 12 June 1614.
The stated motive is the failure of imported drugs. Medicines brought from Spain, Ximénez writes in the prologue, "passando tanta inmensidad de mares, pierden de su virtud la mayor parte", and he ends by giving as his purpose the wish to make known the true medicine of the country, "siendo tan necessaria, pues toda ella esta despoblada, y con mucha necessidad para los que viuen en estancias y minas, do no ay Medico ni Botica a donde acudir por el Remedio".
The dedication states the epistemic claim that makes the book matter: it is "vn verdadero trasumpto de muchas plantas y animales medecinales no conocidas, ni vistas de ninguno de los antiguos q[ue] en esta materia escriuieron" — a materia medica of things no classical authority had described.
The nomenclature is Nahuatl, and stands as the chapter heading rather than as a gloss. Book one has "DEL XOCHINACAZTLI, O FLOR de la oreja, l, hueinacaztli"; the chapters on copal run "copalquahuitl patlahuac", "DEL COPAL QVAVHXIOTL ò arbol leproso" and "DEL COPAL MONTANO, ò Tepecopalliquahuitl"; the second part treats "la Piedra de hijada, q[ue] llaman, tlilayotic" and "xoxouhqui ticpatli, ò piedra verde".
The supply chain described is the indigenous one. Of the xochinacaztli the book says that "no ay otra cosa en los tianguez, y mercados de los indios que mas ordinariamente se halle ni que en mayor estima se tenga", and records its use in "aquella tan celebrada beuida del cacao q[ue] llaman chocolate", with vanilla pods and toasted texochilli — the pharmacy and the kitchen of the Nahua market, written down for Spanish readers.
The book also proposes a transfer in the other direction. Of the broad-leaved copalquahuitl patlahuac, which grows in hot country and "mayormente en Cuernauaca", Ximénez writes that "si yo no me engaño no seria trabajo perdido el hazerlo lleuar a España, y plantarlo en lo mas caliente de las tierras della".
Ximénez is neither the first nor a disinterested transmitter, and says so. He records that Hernández's material had already been copied repeatedly, the copies "suyas en el nombre y de todo punto corruptas, assi en los bocablos como en los medicamentos", and names Fr. Augustin Farfan, Ioan de Barrios and Alonso Lopez de Hinojosa among the physicians who had already put it into print before him. The 1615 book is therefore a late vernacular link in a chain, not the publication of Hernández's own work.
The compiler's own limit is on the page. Describing the illnesses that afflicted him, Ximénez writes that they ended "con perdida del oyr, potencia necessaria para aprender la lengua" — the man transmitting a Nahua pharmacopoeia states that deafness had cost him the faculty needed to learn the language it came in. Which language he means is not spelled out in the passage read.
The regard for the informants is instrumental and at points contemptuous, and belongs on the record beside the borrowing. In the second part, on the bezoar and jade stones, the reader is warned "a los q[ue] compran de los indios, estas piedras miren bien no los engañen, por q[ue] son tan bellacos" that they will pass off one kind of stone for every kind. Nothing in the pages read claims the knowledge for its Nahua holders or credits them by name.