Herbal Hernandez - Rerum Medicarum & the Aztecs 

An illustrated herbal published in Mexico in 1552, Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis , is written in the Aztec Nauhuatl language by a native physician, Martín Cruz. This is probably an extremely early account of the medicine of the Aztecs although the formal illustrations, resembling European ones, suggest that the artists were following the traditions of their Spanish masters rather than an indigenous style of drawing. In 1570 Francisco Hernández was sent from Spain to study the natural resources of New Spain . Here he drew on indigenous sources, including the extensive botanical gardens that had been established by the Aztecs, to record c. 1200 plants in his Rerum Medicarum of 1615. Nicolás Monardes’ Dos Libros contains the first published illustration of tobacco.