Abstract
This essay discusses the methods and effect of the dissemination of South Asian medicinal substances and healing techniques throughout the Portuguese maritime colonial network. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Indian medicine played a significant role in global Portuguese colonial health care institutions. Analysis covers official reports about Indian medicines produced by Portuguese colonial medical authorities, and consignments of indigenous medicines shipped from Goa, the administrative capital of the Estado da Índia, to Macau, Timor, Mozambique, Brazil, and Continental Portugal. South Asian medicinal preparations and healing techniques spread to Lusophone enclaves in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, far from their indigenous roots, and were fully incorporated into the Portuguese lexicon of tropical medicine.