That same year, about the month of September, the famous Dr. Francisco Hernandez, court physician of Philip II., arrived in Mexico. He was a native of Toledo and was born about 1517 or 1518. Nothing is known of his life previous to his journey to New Spain, whither he came by royal commission, to write the natural history of the country, with reference to medicine. He consumed seven years in the discharge of his commission, making continual journeys, meeting obstacles and suffering diseases which brought him to the edge of the grave. It has been generally said that Philip II. supplied the expenses of this expedition with regal munificence and that it cost him 20,000 ducats; but documents published in our days, clearly show that Hernandez was given but a modest salary, although we do not know exactly the amount, with no assistance whatever for his extraordinary expenses, not even for those occasioned by his frequent journeys. Nor was he supplied the assistance usual in such cases, and he had no other helper than his own son. In spite of all this he was never discouraged in that great enterprise. In order to devote himself entirely to it, he refused to practice medicine in Mexico, ‘throwing away the opportunity of gaining more than 20,000 pesos by the practice of the healing art, and much more by occupations pursued in this country, on account of employing myself in the service of your majesty and in the consummation of the work’--as he himself says in a letter to the king. Not content with describing and making drawings of the plants and animals of New Spain he caused the efficacy of the medicines to be practically tested in the hospitals, and availing himself of his title of _protomedico_, convoked the practitioners then in the city and urged them to make similar tests and to communicate the results to him. Finally he carried to Spain, 1577, seventeen volumes of text and illustrations, in which was the natural history; and an additional volume containing various writings upon the customs and antiquities of the Indians. Copies of all were left in Mexico, which have disappeared. He wrote the work in Latin; he translated a part of it into Spanish, and the Indians, under his direction, commenced a translation into Aztec.