Martin de la Cruz

Martin de la Cruz was a Nahua physician who in 1552, at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco in Mexico, compiled an illustrated herbal manuscript describing the medicinal properties of 250 plants used by the Aztecs; his original Nahuatl text does not survive. The work was translated into Latin the same year by Juan Badiano, becoming known as the Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, or the Badianus Manuscript, and it stands as the first illustrated, descriptive scientific text of Nahua medicine and botany produced in the Americas. Little else about Martin de la Cruz's own life or training survives in the documented record; he is known almost entirely through this one work.