da Costa (ca. 1525 – ca. 1594) , better known under the Spanish form of his name, Cristóbal Acosta, was born at Bõa Ventura (Cape Verde Islands). He probably moved soon to Lisbon (Portugal) and seems to have studied the arts and medicine at Salamanca university (Spain). Before 1550, he traveled as a soldier to the East Indies where he met García d’Orta (1500 [?] – 1568) in Goa. After a brief stay back to Lisbon, he returned to Goa shortly after García’s death. The next year, he was appointed physician of Cochin Royal Hospital, and remained in charge until 1572. Back to Europe, he practiced medicine in Burgos (Spain) until 1587.
Acosta is mainly known for his Tractado delas drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales, con sus plantas debuxadas al bivo por Christoval Acosta medico y cirujano que las vio ocularmente En qual se verifica mucho de lo que escrivio el Doctor Garcia de Orta (Treatise on the drugs, and medicines of the East Indies, with their plants drawn from nature by Christoval Acosta, physician and surgeon who personally saw them. In which much of what Doctor Garcia de Orta wrote is confirmed), first published in Burgos (Spain) in 1578. However, he also wrote another work on the same topic, which seems to be lost: Tratado de las yerbas, plantas, frutas y animales, así terrenos como aquatiles que en aquellas partes y en la Persia y en la China hay, no dibujadas al natural hasta agora (Treatises on the herbs, plants, fruits and animals, terrestrial as well as marine, which are in these parts, and also in Persia and China, not represented so far from nature).
While in India, Acosta collected specimens and wrote his Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias orientales … (Treatise on the drugs, and medicines of the East Indies …) heavily relying on García d’Orta (1500 [?] – 1568) as he recognized in the sub-title. The work was first printed in 1578 (Burgos) and translated into Italian, Latin (by the botanist Charles de l’Ecluse [1526 – 1609], with three editions all in Anvers: 1582, 1593, and 1605), and eventually French (both in Lyon, 1602, and 1619).