[Jirí Josef Camel, pharmacist and botanist]

Jirí Josef Camel (1661-1706), a pharmacist and botanist, was born in Brno, educated at a grammar school and then joined the Jesuit Order as a laic brother. He worked in the college pharmacies in Brno, Jindrichův Hradec and Ceský Krumlov. In 1687 he left for a religious mission to the Philippine Islands, where he worked for 17 years in a hospital as a pharmacist. He died in Manila in 1706. He wrote 19 treatises, in which he acquainted European medicine and pharmacy with the flora and fauna of the Philippines. Camel sent his papers to London to J. Ray, the then most distinguished authority in botany. Ray published them in the 3rd volume of Historia Plantarum in 1704. The most valuable part of his work are drawings of plants, published by Petiver in the journal Gazophylacei naturae et artis (1702-1709). More than 400 of them have survived till nowadays in the collection of the British Museum. Further 260 drawings were acquired in the course of years by the University Library in Louvain.