Georg J. Kamel: Natural Knowledge in Transit

In this lecture, I will focus on the medical practices of the Jesuit pharmacist Georg Joseph Kamel. In 1687, Kamel was sent as a missionary to the Philippines, then a colony under the Spanish flag. During his stay, he produced comprehensive treatises concerned with Philippine nature, in which he included episodes from his medical practice.

I will use these sources to demonstrate how Kamel understood Philippine nature and incorporated local materia medica into European frameworks of knowledge. Previous work concerned with European encounters with new worlds has tended to highlight the desire of colonists for new, profitable plants on the one hand, and the insufficiency of Old World remedies in the face of new realities on the other.Kamel’s work offers a markedly different view. Although Kamel regularly adopted native materia medica into his medical practice, I argue that he understood these plants predominantly as substitutes for Old World drugs, which were too expensive to import.