José Celestino Mutis

Jose Celestino Mutis
Mutis by R. Cristobal, 1930
Born	6 April 1732 Cádiz, Andalusia
Died	11 September 1808 (aged 76) Bogotá
Education	University of Seville
Scientific career
Fields	Botanist, mathematician, priest, artist

José Celestino Bruno Mutis y Bosio (6 April 1732 – 11 September 1808) was a Spanish priest, botanist and mathematician. He was a significant figure in the Spanish American Enlightenment, whom Alexander von Humboldt met on his expedition to Spanish America. He is one of the most important authors of the Spanish Universalist School of the 18th century, together with Juan Andrés or Antonio Eximeno.

Life

He was born in Cádiz and baptized with the name José Celestino Bruno Mutis y Bosio. He began his medical studies at the College of Surgery in Cádiz, where he also studied physics, chemistry and botany. He graduated in medicine from the University of Seville on 2 May 1755.

On 5 July 1757 he received his doctorate in medicine. From 1757 to 1760 he was interim professor of anatomy in Madrid. During those same years he continued to study botany at the Migas Calientes Botanical Gardens (now the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid), and also astronomy and mathematics.

After three years he decided to leave for America, as the private physician of the new viceroy of New Granada, Pedro Messía de la Cerda. He sailed on 7 September 1760, arriving at Santa Fe de Bogotá on 24 February 1761. During the long transatlantic passage he began writing his Diario de Observaciones, which he continued until 1791.

From his arrival in the Viceroyalty, Mutis concentrated on his botanical studies, beginning work on an herbal and investigating for cinchona, which was considered a panacea for the treatment of all kinds of diseases. He wrote El Arcano de la Quina.

Botanical expedition

Beginning in 1763, Mutis proposed to the king that he sponsor an expedition to study the flora and fauna of the region. He had to wait 20 years for the authorization, but in 1783 the king authorized his expedition (one of three royal botanical expeditions to the New World at about that time). In the interim, Mutis concentrated on commercial and mineralogical projects, not neglecting medicine. He also studied the social and economic conditions of the viceroyalty, and continued to expand his collection of flora and fauna. On 19 December 1772 he was ordained a priest. He was in regular correspondence with scientists in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, particularly Carl Linnaeus.

Mutis led the Royal Botanical Expedition, established in 1783, for 25 years. It explored some 8,000 km² in a range of climates, using the Río Magdalena for access to the interior. He developed a meticulous methodology that included the harvesting of the samples in the field together with detailed descriptions, including data on the surroundings of each species and its utility. Hundreds of plants were discovered and described. More than 8,000 plates, plus maps, correspondence, notes and manuscripts were sent to Spain. His museum consisted of 24,000 dried plants, 5,000 drawings of plants by his pupils, and a collection of woods, shells, resins, minerals, and skins. These treasures arrived safely at Madrid in 105 boxes, and the plants, manuscripts, and drawings were sent to the botanical gardens, where they were relegated to a tool-house.

The Royal Botanical Expedition headquarters moved in two different occasions. Initially it was based on the municipality of La Mesa (now in the Department of Cundinamarca), then in November 1783 it was moved to Mariquita (Department of Tolima). Finally in 1791 it was moved to Santa Fe de Bogota.

Much of the work was wasted because the results remained unedited and unanalyzed. Also, the collation between the notes and the plates was lost during the transfer to Spain. His work on the species and varieties of Chinchona had lasting influence.

He determined the longitude of Bogotá by the observation of an eclipse of a satellite of Jupiter and was a major influence on the construction of the National Astronomical Observatory.

In March 1762, at the inauguration of the chair of mathematics at the Colegio del Rosario, he expounded the principles of the Copernican system and of the experimental method of science, leading to a confrontation with the Church. In 1774 he had to defend the teaching of the principles of Copernicus, as well as natural philosophy and modern, Newtonian physics and mathematics, before the Inquisition.

In 1784, he was elected a foreign member of the RSAOS Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Alexander von Humboldt visited Mutis in 1801, during his expedition to America. Humboldt stayed with Mutis for two months, and greatly admired his botanical collection.

Mutis died in Bogotá on 2 September 1808, at age 76, a victim of apoplexy. Because much of his botanical work was lost or unpublished, he is known to history not as a great scientist, but as a great promoter of science and knowledge.

Fields

• Botany: He studied the flora of his surroundings, and produced a marvelous collection of plates of Colombian plants that are now located in the Royal Botanical Garden in Madrid.
• Linguistics: He studied the indigenous languages of the area. By order of King Charles III, he developed a series of elementary vocabularies of various languages (about 100 words in each language). King Charles was responding to a request from Czarina Catherine the Great to provide vocabularies of all the languages spoken in his realms, in order to develop a monumental dictionary of all the languages of the world. The dictionary was in fact published, but the compilers published it in alphabetical order, making it nearly impossible to consult.
• Other sciences, including important contributions to industrial processes, such as silver mining and the distillation of rum.

Works

• Diario de observaciones de José Celestino Mutis, 1760-1790, 2 vols. 2nd edition. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura Hispánica 1983.
• Escritos botánicos. María Paz Martín Fierro, ed. Editoriales Andaluzas Unidas 1985.
• Escritos científicos de José Celestino Mutis. Guillermo Hernández de Alba. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura Hispánica 1983.
• Flora de la Real Expedición Botánica del Nuevo Reino de Granada. Madrid: Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica 1954.
• Viaje a Santa Fe. Marcelo Frías Núñez, ed. Madrid: Historia 16 (1991).

Legacy

His likeness is well known to Spaniards, because his image was used on the 1992-2002 banknotes of 2,000 Pesetas. This was the first in a series of banknotes commemorating Spain in America. On the reverse was a drawing of the Mutisia clematis flower, named in his honor. He was also depicted in the 200 Colombian Pesos banknote between 1983 and 1992.

José Celestino Mutis Botanical Gardens, a park and center of scientific investigation, is named in his honor in Bogotá. It includes climate-controlled exhibits of the flora in all climate zones of Colombia. There is also an exhibit of 5,000 Colombian orchids, one of Colombia's most extensive.

The official name of the town of Bahía Solano on Colombia's Pacific coast in the Department of Chocó is Puerto Mutis, in honor of José Celestino Mutis. The airport there is Aeropuerto José Celestino Mutis, as well. This town is located north of the city of Buenaventura and north of the San Juan River, the largest river in South America to empty into the Pacific Ocean.

In 1783, he hired Vicente Albán to commit paintings associated with the flora of Ecuador.

His collection of plant specimens deposited in Paris at the National Museum of Natural History, France was curated by Alicia Lourteig.

Other expeditions

The four expeditions authorized by King Charles III to the Spanish colonies were those of Hipólito Ruiz López and José Antonio Pavón to Peru and Chile (1777–1788); Mutis to New Granada (1783–1808); Juan de Cuéllar to the Philippines (1786–1797); and Martín Sessé y Lacasta to New Spain (1787–1803).

See also

• Spanish Universalist School of the 18th century
• List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics
• Spanish American Enlightenment

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

José Celestino Mutis — Eminent naturalist and scientist in South America, b. at Cadiz, Spain, 6 April, 1732; d. at Bogotá, Colombia, 2 Sept., 1808.

Mutis studied medicine at Seville and Madrid and, from 1757, practised as a physician at Madrid, where he applied himself to botany. Soon afterwards he went to South America as physician-in-ordinary to the newly-appointed Viceroy of New Granada, Mesía de la Cerda (Marqués de la Vega). In November, 1760, he landed in Cartagena, and remained in New Granada for five decades. By his great zeal for science and his untiring and versatile activity, he became more and more the soul of all scientific undertakings in Spanish South America. Although he at first taught mathematics and, about the end of his life, founded an observatory in Bogotá and directed the same as astronomer, he devoted his energies almost wholly to researches in the natural history of New Granada, even continuing this work, when, in 1772, he became a cleric (priest?) and canon at the cathedral of Bogotá. During the first years of his life at Bogotá he had planned the botanical exploration of the whole country, intending to write a book on the flora of New Granada. For his researches he maintained substations at Cácota and La Montuosa, which Linné supposed to be situated in Mexico. He settled in Mariquita after he had been appointed in 1783 by Charles III, under the viceroy and Archbishop Gongora, leader of the "Expedición botánica del Nueva Reino de Granad", which was founded by the State. Here, as Alexander von Humboldt, an eyewitness, relates, Mutis laid out a plantation of cinchona. Mutis was obliged to train his whole staff of assistants (collectors, painters, engravers, etc.); he also taught several native botanists, e.g., Zea, Caldas, and Restrepo, furthermore his nephew and successor, Sinforoso Mutis. At that time, Mutis was widely known; Linné, who received from him South American plants and corresponded frequently with him, calls him "phytologorum americanorum princeps". Linné's son defined the genus Mutisia in 1781. The Spanish botanist Cavanilles lauded him in 1791 as "botanicorum facile princeps". At Bogotá, where he spent the last ten years of his life, the famous explorers Humboldt and Bonpland stayed with him for two months in 1801, filled with admiration for his rich collections. Their famous work, "Plantes equinoctiales" (1818), is adorned with a beautiful portrait of Mutis, and Humboldt erected a glorious monument to the American investigator by writing his biography ("Biographie universelle", XXX, Paris, 1821).

Subsequent generations were perhaps justified in judging Mutis less favourably, but it is unjust on the part of some critics to seek to degrade Mutis to the position of an unimportant amateur or to abuse him. Mutis committed the fault that he never ended his researches, and thus published almost nothing during his life-time. He, furthermore, had the misfortune to have his scientific legacy at first remain totally unnoticed in consequence of the political disorders of that time. His museum consisted of 24,000 dried plants, 5000 drawings of plants by his pupils, and a collection of woods, shells, resins, minerals, and skins. These treasures arrived safely at Madrid in 105 boxes, and the plants, manuscripts, and drawings were sent to the botanical gardens, where they were buried in a tool-house. Mutis's cinchona investigations render his work of lasting importance. While he was not the first to discover the genuine cinchona for New Granada - as became known with certainty only after his death - he rendered important services by his study of the cinchonas, their geographical distribution in Colombia, their species and varieties, and their utilization for medicine. This is shown by the trade, which developed in such a manner that (e.g.) the seaport of Cartagena alone exported from New Granada 1,200,000 pounds of cinchona bark in 1806, while previous to 1776 this country produced no quinquina at all. This is furthermore shown by Mutis's writings, which, however, were not printed in full until 1870. Mutis himself published in 1793 and 1794 a short monograph on cinchonas in "Diaro de Santa Fe de Bogotá". A year later appeared "Observaciones y conocimientos de la quina" (in 4 numbers, 608-11, of "Mercurio Peruano de Lima", 1795). The above-mentioned Zea published sometime later "Memoria sobre la quina segun los principios del Señor Mutis" ("Anales de Historia Natural", Madrid, 1800). Mutis sent his chief work "El arcano de la quina" in manuscript to Madrid, but the war with France prevented its publication; in 1828 the Spanish physician Hernández de Gregorio edited the first three parts of this work with Mutis's portrait ("El arcano de la quina. Discurso que contiene la parte médica de las cuatro especies de quinas oficinalis", Madrid, 1828, 263 pages). The manuscript of the botanical-scientific part was discovered by Clements R. Markham in a shed in the botanical gardens of Madrid; he published it under the title: "Tabula synoptica ad specierum generis Chinchonæ determinationem. Quinilogiæ pars quarta" (edited in Markham, "The Cinchona species of New Granada", London, 1867). The tables, which Mutis selected for this work, were published in 1870 in facsimile by Triana ("Nouvelles études sur les Quinquina", Paris). Through these writings it became evident, as some special investigators confessed, that Mutis had penetrated deeply into the study of the cinchonas of Central Colombia. It may be mentioned that Mutis distinguished four species of cinchonas with an officinal bark, and he added to them twenty-four varieties. For other manuscripts of Mutis see Colmeiro; a part of Mutis's correspondence is to be found in the work: "A selection of the correspondence of Linnæus and other naturalists" (London, 1881).

COLMEIRO, La Botánica y los Botánicos de la Península Hispano-Lusitana (Madrid, 1858); MARKHAM, Peruvian Bark (London, 1880); SCHUMACHER, Südamerikanische Studien (Berlin, 1884).

M. Rompel.

Further reading

• Bleichmar, Daniela. Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions & Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2012.
• Puente Veloso, S. "José Celestino Mutis: physician, humanist," Anales de la Real Academia Nacional de Medicina 1986, vol. 103, no. 3, 411-36.
• San Pío Aladrén, Maria Pilar de, ed. Mutis y la Real Expedición del Nuevo Reyno de Granada. 2 vols. Madrid 1992.
• Wilson, Edward O; Durán, José M. Gómez (2010). Kingdom of Ants José Celestino Mutis and the Dawn of Natural History in the New World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9780801899737.

External links

• Drawings of the Royal Botanical Expedition online
• National Astronomical Observatory
• His biography at The Catholic Encyclopedia
• José Celestino Mutis. Polymath Virtual Library, Fundación Ignacio Larramendi
• (in Spanish) Short biography
• (in Spanish) His influence
• (in Spanish) José Celestino Mutis Botanical Garden official site