Juan Badiano

Juan Badiano was a Nahua scholar, born in Xochimilco, who studied and later taught Latin at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, a school founded to educate the sons of the indigenous nobility of central Mexico. In 1552 he translated into Latin an illustrated Nahuatl herbal manuscript compiled by Martin de la Cruz describing 250 medicinal plants used by the Aztecs, producing the text now known as the Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, or the Badianus Manuscript, one of the earliest and most important surviving records of Aztec medical knowledge. Badiano is not documented as a practicing physician himself; his contribution was as the bilingual scholar whose translation carried Nahua medical knowledge into a form that could circulate in colonial Europe.