José de Acosta
His deductions regarding the ill effects of crossing over the Andes in 1570 related to the atmosphere being too thin for human needs led to the modern understanding of a variety of altitude sickness, now referred to as Acosta's disease.
José de Acosta was born in Medina del Campo in Spain, about twenty-four miles from Valladolid, in Old Castile, on the left bank of the swampy river Zapardiel, and overlooked by the old castle of La Mota.
He took the route, with fourteen or fifteen companions, across the mountainous province of Huarochiri, and by the lofty pass of Pariacaca (over 14,000 ft (4,300 m)), where the whole party suffered severely from the effects of the rarefied atmosphere.
At Juli, Father Acosta received information respecting the Amazon River from a brother who had formerly been in the famous piratical cruise of Lope de Aguirre.
Acosta had conversations with the pilot of Sarmiento's fleet, and was allowed to inspect his chart, thus obtaining much hydrographic information, and particulars respecting the tides in the straits.
[10] Acosta founded a number of colleges, among them those of Arequipa, Potosí, Chuquisaca, Panama and La Paz, even when met with considerable opposition from the Viceroy Toledo.
His official duties obliged him to investigate personally a very extensive range of territory, so that he acquired a practical knowledge of the vast province, and of its aboriginal inhabitants.
He learned from an expert Portuguese pilot that there were four often-visited ports[citation needed] of no magnetic compass variation on the Earth, and that one of them was Corvo Island in the Azores.
[12] Acosta had been called to Spain by the King in 1585, prior to being detained in Mexico, in order to debate against Alonzo Sánchez's plans to initiate an invasion of China.
In a form more concise than that employed by his predecessors, Francisco Lopez de Gómara and Oviedo, he treated the natural and philosophic history of the New World from a broader point of view.
The Historia also described Inca and Aztec customs and history, as well as other information such as winds and tides, lakes, rivers, plants, animals, and mineral resources in the New World.
