Mutis, José Celestino (1732–1808)

José Celestino Mutis (b. 6 April 1732; d. 11 September 1808), distinguished figure of the Spanish American Enlightenment. Born in Cádiz, one of the cities in Spain most receptive to the new ideas of the Enlightenment, Mutis studied first at the Colegio de San Fernando in his hometown and later at the University of Sevilla. Mutis concentrated on botany—he evidently had some correspondence with Linnaeus—although he also studied physics, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. A licensed physician, he went to the Indies in 1760 as doctor to the new viceroy of New Granada, Pedro de Messía De La Cerda.

Immediately after his arrival in Bogotá, Mutis began collecting and studying New World plants for their medicinal value. As the premier physician in New Granada—there were only two licensed in the realm—he became protomédico (medical examiner) in Bogotá, dedicating himself to improving public health and controlling epidemics. In 1773 he entered the clergy. Like the first protomédico of New Spain (Francisco Hernández) two hundred years earlier, Mutis combined his medical training with his botanical expertise.

Late in 1783, with the title of First Botanist and Astronomer of the King from Charles III, Mutis headed a team of eighteen distinguished scientists who traversed virtually all of what is now Colombia, collecting samples of the flora, making drawings, and ascertaining the practical uses of the 130 families of plants and twenty thousand herbs they studied. To disseminate the findings of his expedition, Mutis planned a series of thirteen volumes, including color drawings, but he never saw his prodigious labors put into print. Overwhelmed by a multitude of scientific, clerical, and medical responsibilities in New Granada, he had no time to see to publication. Fortunately, however, after his death, almost seven thousand of his drawings and four thousand pages of manuscripts were shipped to the archive of the Real Jardín Botánico (Royal Botanical Garden) in Madrid.

A typical figure of the Spanish American Enlightenment, Mutis was interested in promoting all useful knowledge: the effectiveness of quinine against malaria, Spanish dictionaries of Indian languages, barometric pressure as it affects the growth of plants, and ways to control epidemics. When the renowned German scientist Alexander von Humboldt came to Bogotá during his travels in Spanish America, he was greatly impressed by Mutis's breadth of learning, referring to him at one point as the "patriarch of botanists" and later dedicating one of his scientific treatises to the Spanish American scientist. In 1803, engaging in yet another intellectual enterprise, Mutis established an astronomical observatory in Bogotá, the highest in the world at the time. He died in Bogotá at seventy-six.

See alsoMedicinal Plants; Protomedicato.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

José Celestino Mutis, Diario de observaciones de José Celestino Mutis, 1760–1790, 2d ed. (1983).

José Celestino Mutis, Flora de la Real Expedicíon Botánica del Nuevo Reino de Granada (1987).

José Celestino Mutis, Viage a Santa Fe (1991).

María Pilar De San Pío Aladrén, ed., Mutis y la Real Expedición del Nuevo Reyno de Granada, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1992).

Additional Bibliography

España, Gonzalo. Mutis y la expedición botánica. Santafé de Bogotá: Panamericana Editorial, 1999.

Hernández de Alba, Gonzalo. Quinas Amargas: El sabio Mutis y la discusión naturalista del siglo XVIII. Colombia: Asesoría Editoria, 1996.

                                   John Jay TePaske