Hunt Institute Archives Text Discovery Platform

Page transcription

11

Gesundheit (1485) ( ) and (1487) ( ), the Hortus Sanitatis of 1511 ( ) and again to Fuchs ( ). Fuchs obviously is way ahead of his predecessors.

From here on the woodcut either degenerated again by being copied over and over, or by getting so complicated it failed to give good information about the plants. This is well shown in Mattioli's Commentarii where the picture is usually quite aesthetically satisfying but often less scientifically useful than something simpler would have been. Among better examples are rice ( ) and plantago ( ); among poorer ones, Faba ( ) and Psyllium ( ).

As tomes, nothing in the botanical world to equal Mattioli's folios had been seen. With well over a thousand pages and five hundred figures and with their fine print these were indeed compendia of herbal learning.

Before closing we should note two famous English herbals. The first of these is John Gerard's The herball or general historie of plantes, 1597. ( ) Gerard's fame is somewhat greater than his merit for he essentially stole a translation of Dodoens and put it out as his own. But he was a good gardener and in Johnson's edition of his work in 1633 his bald mistakes of 1597 were corrected. It is interesting to note that even so late as 1633 Dioskorides' pictures were still appearing. ( ) Here we have on the left the 16th century version (from Dodoens via Gerard) beside its 6th century original.

Finally, among famous herbals is Parkinson's Paradisi in Solex with this ( ) most interesting title page. But that is another story!