Garcia de Orta, the Faculty of Medicine at Lisbon, and the Portuguese overseas endeavor at the beginning of the sixteenth century

This article assesses whether the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon played a significant part in the development of medical knowledge in the Portuguese Empire during the first three decades of the sixteenth century. An analysis of the masters who taught at the university suggests that the Empire had little attraction for the faculty's teaching staff, making the well-known case of Garcia de Orta (c.1500-1568) quite exceptional.