JOYFUL AND PROFITABLE NEWS FROM THE NEW WORLD. 
AMERICAN ANIMALS AS NATURAL RESOURCES AND 
MEDICAL DRUGS IN THE 16^th and 17^th CENTURIES

The early reactions of wonder prompted by the discovery of the fauna of Central and South America by early modern Europeans were followed by a more practical approach. The European powers began to see the newly found animals as natural resources and commodities for trade, as the sources of new drugs for the new diseases that plagued the Old World, as symbols of the vastness and richness of the rapidly growing sea empires. The most significant organised attempts to survey the animals that could be turned to profit were those of Francisco Hernández -sent by Philip II to New Spain during the 16^th century- and those of Georg Markgraf and Wilhelm Piso who worked in Dutch Brazil during the 17^th century. Back at home specialists like the Spanish Nicolás Monardes and the famous botanist Clusius were keenly interested in the new drugs that could be found not only in the plants, but also in the animals of the New World. The texts written by these authors, a result of the efforts of the Spanish monarchy and the Dutch West India Company to secure the access to new sources of wealth in the wake of imperial expansion, raise interesting questions as to the relationships of the learned traditions of natural history and medicine during the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Knowledge of the animals of the newly found lands were conveyed not only in the scholarly books of natural historians and physicians but also in a more popular kind of literature: in England and the Dutch Republic there was a steady current of publication of books on America -like de Laet's Novus Orbis or the series of the de Bry family- and collections of voyages of discovery -like those of Hakluyt and Purchas in England- that included a fair amount of information of animals.