8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 94 



Fr. Andres de Olmos. All three of these were gifted scholars of the 

 Aztec language, and undoubtedly gave instruction in the writing of 

 Aztec. (The Nahuatl grammar of Olmos is still today the background 

 for all recent studies of the language.) Fr. Juan de Gaona also taught 

 rhetoric, logic, and philosophy. And in addition we read " For a short 

 time they taught also Medicine to the Indians, which they still use 

 in their knowledge of herbs and roots and other things which they 

 apply in their illnesses." 



The fame of the college grew and flourished to such an extent 

 that by the time of the second viceroy D. Luis de Velasco (1550-64), 

 the rents of the college were not sufficient to sustain so many students. 

 Through the intercession of the viceroy, the Emperor, Philip II, aided 

 each year with two to three hundred ducats.'" But after his death, 

 the college lost favor with both the church and the governors. For 

 a while the Indians themselves made an attempt to support the col- 

 lege, and we read the following notes from Mendieta : " The convent 

 of Santiago of Tlaltelolco (in the borough of Mexico) has sustained 

 itself very abundantly with the alms of the Indians, having continu- 

 ously a gathering of Indian guests." . . . . " Indian butchers brought 

 meat to the convent of Tlaltelolco on Saturday as their offerings." 

 But by the time Mendieta was completing this history, approximately 

 in 1598, we find him writing: " But this all is finished, and now the 

 college serves for little more than to teach the Indian children who 

 gather there, who are from the town of Tlaltelolco itself, good man- 

 ners and to read and write." 



Of all those who taught in the College of Santa Cruz, Friar Ber- 

 nardino de Sahagun was the most eminent. Of his long life in Mexico 

 ( 1 529-1 590), a large part was spent at Tlaltelolco. He was the first 

 of the Europeans to gather together data on native materia medica. 

 For the most part this was assembled in books 10 and 11 of his 

 " Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espaiia ". In a note of 

 especial interest attached to the end of book 6 (Codice Florentino, 

 libro 6 lam. 17), he tells us that he obtained his knowledge of Aztec 

 medicine from eight native physicians of the district of Tlaltelolco, 

 Santiago, and includes their signatures as follows : Caspar Mattias, 

 Francisco Symon, Felipe Hernandez, Miguel Garcia, Pedro de San- 

 tiago, Miguel Damian, Pedro de Raquena, and Miguel Motolinia. 

 Book 6 was assembled in the year 1547, one year after the great 

 plague, but the major part of all his writings on native medicine was 

 not compiled until after 1557, when Fray Francisco Toral, Provincial 

 of the Franciscan Order, commanded him to put his vast amount of 



'* Icazbalceta (tr. of Mendieta), p. 415. 



